


Seachange

by soundczechfic



Category: Johnny's Entertainment, KAT-TUN (Band)
Genre: Angst, Cancer, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Heavy Angst, M/M, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 06:23:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10679520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soundczechfic/pseuds/soundczechfic
Summary: Kame visits Jin in a little Australian town by the sea. ANGST.





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: ANGST. I'm not going to give a list of specific warnings because personally I hate being spoiled for stories like this, but do not read this if you are not comfortable with extreme angst.

  
Jin hears from Kame twice a year, on average; a long letter on his birthday, hastily written on the train or in the car, characters slightly bumpy and lopsided from the rolling wheels; usually, a few months later, a phone call. It’s around the same time every year but Jin has never figured out what prompts the call. For whatever reason, Kame finds November lonely.   
  
Sometimes they speak more often, but it’s pretty hard to catch Kame with a spare moment to answer his phone. It’s the same with most of Jin’s old friends, a fact that makes him sullen and sulky whenever he has to leave yet another message on Yamapi’s voicemail, but it makes every reunion ever more joyous. Last year Jin traveled home to Tokyo for his mother’s birthday; had felt drunk on Pi’s presence, and Ryo’s, and Ueda’s, had rambled happily in his native tongue, free of the slight awkwardness he always feels in his new home. He speaks English well enough now, after all these years, but he speaks it slowly, words measured and even to be understood.   
  
He’d seen Kame too, but only for half an hour; they’d arranged to meet at Narita, Jin arriving in Tokyo as Kame departed for France. They’d sat together in the VIP lounge, hunched over their coffees, but it hadn’t been long enough. It would take Jin much longer than half an hour to get even close to figuring out how Kame really was.  
  
Whenever Jin asks, whoever Jin asks, the answer is always the same: Kame is busy, but fine.  
  
When Kame calls out of the blue one day in July and says that he has a little bit of time off, that he’d like to visit, Jin isn’t sure what to make of it.   
  
\-   
  
When Jin made the decision at twenty four years old that he was done with Johnny’s Entertainment, Kame hadn’t been able to talk to him for months afterwards, five or six at least. He’d given Jin his blessing in the days before the press conference, had touched his hair and wished him well, but he hadn’t been able to face him honestly and that, along with Koki’s belligerent rage, Ueda’s silence, Nakamaru’s tears and Taguchi’s worry, had made the new world he was stepping into seem bleak and dystopic, an endless wasteland of monsters and ghosts without his trusty friends to back him up. The feeling hadn’t lasted long in the face of the excitement he felt as he roamed from city to city, but those first few months had been terrifying. Sometimes he’d lie in the lumpy, uncomfortable beds at whatever cheap, crappy backpacker’s hostel he was staying in and think about what this would have been like if the others were with him, even just Kame or Pi. With Pi he’d go to bars and chat up girls, full of the bravado of hunting in a pack, and with Kame he wouldn’t have to, because he’d be able to talk Kame back into bed with him and they’d lie in these scratchy sheets together.   
  
In those months, he’d emailed Kame frequently, but the reply was always a variation on a theme: _I’m okay, everybody’s okay, I’ll call you soon,_ but he never did. It wasn’t until Jin had an anxiety attack in Brazil one day that he could even get Kame to answer the phone; whatever the little blue pill Jin’s traveling companion had given him was, it’d made him dial Kame’s number over and over again for hours, sitting on the floor in the ladies’ room at a bar, beneath the sinks. By the time Kame finally answered the phone Jin’s battery was just about dead and he’d spent a couple hundred dollars just on leaving voicemail.   
  
“What’s wrong?” Kame asked in a hurry when he finally answered the call. His voice was threadbare from exhaustion, slightly out of breath; Jin could hear his exhalations puff into the mouthpiece.   
  
“You won’t talk to me,” Jin said, leaning his head against the tile. There was a woman standing at the sink fixing her lipstick. Jin looked at her shoes, the slightly dusty curves and straps of her leather sandals.   
  
There was a long, frustrated silence. “Jin,” Kame gritted out. “I have 85 missed calls from you. When I looked at my phone I thought it must be some hospital god knows where calling to tell me you were dead.”   
  
“You wouldn’t even care if I was,” Jin said childishly, and Kame hung up on him. The next day, Jin called to apologise, carefully omitting the part about the mysterious little pill to avoid a lecture. Kame had bitched and grumbled through the entire conversation, but at least he’d answered the phone.  
  
\-   
  
Jin drives into Sydney to pick Kame up from the airport. It’s a warm day, for winter, sun slanting through the overhanging clouds and making the city seem a little brighter and happier than it did the last time Jin visited, when it seemed sad and downcast with rain. He sings along to an old Bon Jovi song as he pulls into the short term parking lot. He’s running late; Kame will probably be annoyed.  
  
When he strolls into the International terminal, Kame is leaning against a thick column near a news stand, eyes obscured by a characteristically huge pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses. He’s always been small, but Jin had never noticed so much in Japan; here, amongst the foreigners with their beer bellies and big meaty legs, he is dwarfed even in his huge fur-lined coat. The sunglasses slide down his nose when Jin calls his name in greeting and hurries forward.  
  
“Hey,” Kame says, just as Jin catches him in an enthusiastically welcoming hug. Kame feels stiff and tiny in his arms, obviously uncomfortable with the public display, but Jin doesn’t mind. He smells like Burberry cologne and the Johnny’s studios, like their childhood. Jin tilts him from side to side and feels Kame tremor a little; his small hand grips Jin’s leather jacket near his hip.   
  
“Welcome to Australia,” Jin says in English when he pulls away, his grin broad and infectious.   
  
“Yoroshiku onegaishimasu,” Kame replies, but doesn’t bow.  
  
\-   
  
Kame looks a little doubtful at the sight of Jin’s car; more than twenty years old and cluttered with shopping bags in the backseat, but he makes no comment. “It’s a classic,” Jin says anyway, as they get in. It’s not, but Kame doesn’t know anything about cars and would probably believe him if he insisted the beat up truck he used to drive in Germany was a rare vintage.   
  
“Oh,” Kame says uncertainly. “It’s very nice.”   
  
It’s always like this the first time they see each other after a long absence. Kame is distant and polite, searching Jin for the signals of their former friendship. He always eases up eventually, his formality easing into the bickering they’re both used to. They have known one another for almost twenty years, Jin realises with a lightning bolt of awe.   
  
“I can’t believe you’re here!” Jin says. “I’m so excited.”   
  
“Thank you for having me,” Kame replies, that same mannered, measured tone. “I should have given you more notice, I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”   
  
“Stop talking like you’re a stranger to me,” Jin says irritably. “It’s no inconvenience.”   
  
“I’m a stranger to Alice.” Kame leans his head against his window as they pull out of the parking lot, peering at the world outside. Jin remembers that when he first came here, he’d looked for kangaroos and crocodiles everywhere. Kame probably isn’t doing that. Well, he might be, but he’d never admit it out loud. “I feel bad troubling her at such short notice.”   
  
“She’s looking forward to meeting you,” Jin protests. She’d quizzed him all morning about what Kame eats (“Nothing”), what he doesn’t eat (“Everything”), how much English he speaks, if he likes animals, if he likes children, if he likes old people, if he likes the beach, if he likes dogs, if he drinks beer, how he takes his coffee, if he feels the cold, if he’d prefer lavender or vanilla soap in the guest bathroom. She’s only had the chance to meet a few of Jin’s friends from back home, and then only briefly; Pi for less than a day when he came to Sydney to shoot a new photobook, Taguchi once on a stopover on his way to New Zealand (he was visiting Middle Earth) and Nakamaru once, when they all happened to be in Fiji at the same time. This is the first time any of Jin’s friends have come just to stay, and she is enthusiastic at the prospect.   
  
“Does she know about us?” Kame asks bluntly.   
  
Once one of Jin’s old girlfriends had found photos of he and Kame in bed together when she was snooping through Jin’s things; not particularly explicit photos, not even close, but not the jokey fanservice kind from magazines either. Intimate, Jin’s face nuzzled happily into the naked curve of Kame’s neck. She hadn’t known about them, and she’d ended up sobbing in confusion and humiliation on Kame’s doorstep even though Jin tried to explain to her that they hadn’t been together for months before they’d met. Kame hadn’t spoken to him for a week.   
  
“Um,” Jin says. “She knows I’ve been with men.” She’d have to know, when they’d met in Rome two years ago, he’d been following a rich young Frenchman around Italy like a puppy. She’d consoled him when Pierre had left him to go home to his wife, and he’d ended up following her home to Australia just because he had nothing else to do.   
  
“Does she know you’ve been with me?” Kame’s eyebrow is raised in that familiar condescending way.  
  
“I don’t know!” Jin yelps. “Maybe. I’m not sure. She knows I’ve been with men and she knows you’re really special to me, so… maybe?”  
  
“You should tell her,” Kame says with a gentle, awkward smile. “You’re no good at hiding things from the people you love.”  
  
-  
  
It’s a long drive, a little over two and a half hours if Jin drives like a calm and responsible adult, which he attempts with Kame in the car. Not that he’s awake to notice; somewhere in the suburbs of Sydney Kame slumps down in his chair and falls asleep, chin tucked into the great explosion of his fur collar. Jin tries not to stare at him too much, but whenever he looks around to check his blind spots and catches a glimpse of him out of the corner of his eye he feels a fresh burst of delight. Kame’s mouth is pressed in a tense little line and he looks exhausted, like he hasn’t slept in a year, but he’s here and they’re not fighting yet, this great big piece of home sleeping safely in his car.   
  
Jin wakes him up when they’re almost into town so that he can see the endless blue expanse of ocean stretching out from the coast. Kame blinks sleepily and murmurs incoherently under his breath, but he looks suitably impressed and leans forward in his seat to peer closer, squinting up at the seagulls hovering in the afternoon sun.  
  
“Maybe we can get you a board and you can go surfing,” Jin says eagerly. He’s never learned to surf himself, not since the first time Kame and Pi tried to teach him. Jin doesn’t like it when he’s not good at things right away. He’d always liked it when Kame went surfing, though, because he’d always seemed so excited about it, even on the drive home, face and hair streaked with drying sand and salt and shoulders pink from the sun. Jin likes to sit on the beach with a manga and his ipod and a bag of candy and watch, or jump the waves without a board.   
  
Kame just says, “Maybe,” and goes back to sleep.  
  
\-   
  
Baxter is asleep on the front deck when Jin pulls into the drive, eyes hidden in the mess of his fur. Alice had been bathing him when Jin left for the airport, but there are already bits of grass tangled in his shaggy hair. He lifts his head as they step out of the car, drags himself to his feet as they struggle to drag Kame’s suitcase from the back seat.   
  
“I didn’t know you had kids,” Kame says.   
  
“What?” Jin asks, dropping the bag with a thump.   
  
Kame nods towards Baxter. “He looks just like you.”   
  
“Hey!” Jin shouts indignantly, even though it’s true, it’s so totally true. Kame laughs his demented little laugh and walks over to the dog, crouching in front of him and ruffling his ears.  
  
“Kawaiiiiiiiiiiiii,” Kame says, in that stupid baby voice he always uses around babies and animals. He looks tiny crouched next to Baxter, or Baxter looks huge, Jin isn’t sure which. The dog’s head is level with Kame’s and when he surges forward to sniff curiously at Kame’s hair, at his gigantic fur collar, Kame wobbles a little on the balls of his feet and laughs loudly.   
  
Alice appears breathlessly in the doorway, stumbling through the screen door with a clumsy little laugh. Kame stands warily and smiles, his polite, nervous smile to her huge, friendly grin.  
  
“Konichiwa, Kamenashi-san,” she says in terribly accented Japanese.   
  
“Hajimemashite,” Kame says with a little bow.  
  
“Um,” she says, and slants her eyes in Jin’s direction.  
  
“She doesn’t actually speak Japanese,” he tells Kame. “She’s just showing off.”   
  
“Ah,” Kame says.   
  
\-   
  
Kame has brought them an expensive bottle of Shochu and Jin’s favourite daifuku, from this little store halfway between their childhood homes.   
  
Jin says, “Is this all you brought me?”   
  
“I don’t know if you deserve it.” He rolls his eyes, as if Jin is an obnoxious child who should only expect a lump of coal in his stocking at Christmas. “Hold on a minute.”   
  
He disappears into the guest room and comes back with a Louis Vuitton satchel that looks like it might be a woman’s purse, only it’s gigantic. He starts pulling little brightly coloured sacks out of it just as Alice returns from the kitchen with their coffee, a mismatched ring of mugs on her tray. She puts a mug down in front of Kame that has the logo of a local surf club printed on the side in faded red letters.   
  
“Thank you,” Kame says in English. For a minute the familiar hiss of his th is jarring, like Jin might look out the window and they’ll be back in the studio in Shibuya.  
  
Kame pushes a bright red package towards him. It’s from Pi, just a bunch of photos and a t-shirt and some jewellery from Shirota-san’s new line. There’s stuff from his mother, too, socks and underwear that he can’t believe she made Kame carry halfway across the world, clippings from the local newspaper about a girl he had a crush on in elementary school getting married. She’s been sending him this kind of hint for a few months now. She wants him to find a nice (Japanese) girl and settle down and have (Japanese) babies. In Tokyo.   
  
The package from KAT-TUN looks like it has been sitting around the rehearsal room for months while they all forgot to send it; there’s a letter from Ueda inside dated three months ago and discs with various member’s hastily scrawled writing across the top. There are dvd box sets of Kame and Taguchi’s recent dramas and an advance copy of Ueda’s solo acoustic album. There’s a t-shirt Koki must have designed, bright red roses twining around the strings of a guitar. There’s a stack of photos an inch thick of Koki’s little girl, her big cheesy grin just like her father’s.   
  
“Thanks,” Jin says, and sticks one of the photos of Hanako on his fridge.  
\-   
  
To Jin’s vast disappointment, Kame retires to bed when it is barely dark, the guest room still and silent through the closed door.   
  
“He’s a party pooper,” Jin whines, sitting on the floor by Alice’s feet, flicking through the channels on the TV with one lazy hand on the remote. There’s a local soap opera about nurses and surfers on. Jin likes it because the nurses go to the beach in bikinis a lot. Alice likes it because of the helpful medical information.   
  
“He probably has jet lag,” Alice scolds. She and Kame had struggled along in stilted conversation made up mostly of gestures and thickly accented nouns. Kame’s English vocabulary is better than Jin remembers it being but he has yet to string together any kind of coherent sentence and has to settle for repeating words and pointing between objects to make connections. Alice’s Japanese is terrible and totally incomprehensible, but she’s really good at charades.  
  
“Mou, there’s barely a time difference at all,” Jin humphs. “I don’t think I’ve seen him sleep more than four hours a night the whole time I’ve known him, why does he have to start now?”   
  
“Well if he works that much he’s probably exhausted,” she laughs, leaning over to hug him from behind. She smells like the basil and lemongrass shampoo she’s been using lately. It always makes Jin hungry for Thai food.   
  
“He slept all the way home in the car! And the whole way in the plane. He’s going to slip into some kind of coma.”   
  
“You’re like a spoiled little kid,” she comments. “Whining because you’re not getting enough attention.”   
  
“When he’s in my house he should pay attention to me,” Jin pouts. If Alice weren’t here he’d probably slip into the guest room and suffocate Kame with the weight of his body, sleep with his nose pressed up against Kame’s heart. He doesn’t wish for that, though, because Alice will stay and Kame won’t. Jin doesn’t like to be alone.   
  
She giggles and tugs on his ears. “You looooooooove him,” she sings. “You want to maaaaaaarrrrrry him.”   
  
“Um,” Jin says, and stops. His silence grows awkward and her fingers drop from his ear.   
  
“Oh,” she says in sudden realisation. “ _Oh._ ”  
  
“Ummmm.....” Jin says.   
  
“So... um. You and him?” she asks, her voice rising in pitch but not volume.   
  
“Sort of...” He rubs his bare feet on the carpet, distracting himself with static electricity bursts.   
  
“For... for um, how long?”   
  
“Uh, I don’t know.” Jin says. “On and off...”  
  
“On and off for...”   
  
He tries to come up with a number and fails. They’d fought a lot because Kame could be a vicious little pain in the ass when he was working, which was constantly, and because Jin had been kind of young and wild and adventurous and there were so many pretty girls throwing themselves at him, whereas Kame just wanted to settle down and have three billion children and lead a quiet life, just himself and his family and his millions of fans. Sometimes they wouldn’t speak to each other for months at a time, not really, when Jin was dating a new girl or Kame was working on a new drama. Then one day Jin would call and say, “What are you doing right now?” and everything would be normal again.   
  
“Well... we met when I was fourteen...” He trails off. Her face is carefully blank and he can’t tell if she’s upset or just feeling uncomfortable; usually if she were upset she’d be twisting the locket around her neck and yelling at him by now, but he can’t ever be sure.   
  
“You slept together when you were fourteen,” she says blankly, that slight note of incredulity that lifts her accent into a question at the end.   
  
“NO,” Jin yelps. “NO, GROSS. KAME WAS TWELVE.”  
  
“WELL YOU’RE BEING REALLY EVASIVE,” she yells back, the way she always does when Jin yells. Jin scowls at her. “So the two of you were like, boyfriends?”  
  
They weren’t boyfriends, not ever. Couples break up, Kame had always said. Couples break up for good. They’re not allowed to.   
  
“I don’t know, not really,” Jin says. Kame always belonged to him in a way he can’t explain to her.   
  
This might just be the most awkward conversation Jin has ever had in his life. He’s never really had to explain the thing between he and Kame to anyone before, has never even really tried to explain it to himself. Kame is just Kame, and Jin is just Jin, and they’ve been Akakame since before they even really wanted to be, Akakame since before Jin ever understood why.   
  
“When was the last time you slept with him?” she asks finally, bluntly.   
  
“A long time ago,” Jin lies. “I don’t remember.”   
  
\-   
  
A few years ago, Jin and Kame met up in Istanbul, because Jin had practically begged Kame to meet him some place where they could be alone. They’d stayed in a crumbling hotel near the Grand Bazaar, the kind of place that has a toilet in the shower and paint chafing off the walls like the whole building has dermatitis.   
  
“I’m picking up diseases just standing here,” Kame had said when he’d walked through the door, dumping his duffel bag on the bed. They’d gone to the market and bought enough food for three days and then holed up in the room for days, wrapped up in the rough, ugly peach coloured sheets. Sometimes, late at night, they’d gone for walks through the city when no-one else was around. Jin liked that because Kame didn’t mind when he held on tight to his hand, afraid of the criminals that might be lurking in the alleys waiting to violate a pretty young foreigner such as himself.  
  
He likes being strange places with Kame, because it’s okay to be scared without being brave.   
  
\-   
  
In the morning, Jin drags himself out of bed to take Baxter for a walk along the beach. The sun is dawning pale yellow against the charcoal sky as day breaks over the coast. The dog runs around him in circles, wind whipping through his fur, barking to Jin and diving at the seagulls that gather along the shore, sending them into white explosions over the waves. Jin whistles a jaunty tune, or tries to. He’s never been very good at whistling. He presses his lips together and blows but sound only comes out about half the time, like he’s a cartoon baby bird still learning to sing. After a few bars he gives up and sings loudly, the half remembered chorus of an old Arashi song, sprawled out boneless and happy on the sand.   
  
-  
  
Kame’s in the kitchen when he gets back to the house, standing at the bench in a huge hooded sweatshirt that hangs almost to his knees and a pair of red flannel pajama pants. Jin can’t see his feet or his hands.   
  
“Hey,” Kame says with a thick morning voice, the same sleepy voice that used to murmur right in Jin’s ear when he was waking up on tour, pressed up close together in their hotel room bed. Sleeping with Kame always made the sheets smell like home.   
  
“Hey,” Jin says, crossing to the fridge. He takes out the milk and the orange juice. “You’re up.”   
  
“Yup.” Kame turns and leans against the bench, facing Jin with one arm crossed across his chest and the other rigid down his side.   
  
“I thought you were going to sleep forever.” Jin says.   
  
Kame smiles faintly. “I would have liked to.”   
  
Jin makes coffee. He takes three teaspoons of sugar and a half a cup of milk like a thirteen year old in his, but Kame screws up his nose and asks for herbal tea.  
  
“Are you serious?” Jin asks.  
  
Kame stares at him blankly. When they were kids Kame drank coffee constantly. He’d come into work every morning with a gigantic cup from Starbucks and be running on that all day. Sometimes, when he hadn’t been sleeping, when he’d been up reading scripts and memorising lines, his movements would be jerky and frantic like his body couldn’t hold all the caffeine inside his bloodstream.  
  
“Too much coffee is bad for you,” Kame says seriously. Jin makes him a peppermint tea from some bags he finds in the back of his pantry. He’s been out of the habit of drinking tea since leaving Japan, and Alice thinks tea is pointless.   
  
“I told Alice about us,” Jin says when he’s finished his coffee and is standing at the sink, rinsing out his mug. “Well, sort of. I mean. It’s kind of hard to really explain.”   
  
“Yeah,” Kame says, hands cupped close around his white china tea cup, staring into the inside like he might try and read the absent tea leaves. His mobile phone vibrates on the bench and he ignores it. “Sometimes I wish I had somebody to explain it to _me_.”   
  
Sometimes Kame sounds so serious that it makes Jin’s organs feel funny, like someone is holding his kidneys in their hand and rolling them around like Chinese medicine balls.   
  
“I’ll _explain_ it to you,” he ends up saying dumbly, lecherously, clumsily stumbling into the solitude of Kame’s taut silence. When Kame looks at him he pushes his tongue into the corner of his mouth and grins at Kame’s spluttering disbelief.   
  
“Jin,” Kame says, “That was _terrible_. I feel like I shouldn’t sleep with you ever again just on principle.”  
  
“That totally would have worked on you when you were fifteen,” Jin sighs. “I liked it when you were easy.”   
  
“That’s because you’re lazy.” Kame sips demurely at his tea as if he wasn’t ever fifteen and undignified with lust, as if he’d never dragged Jin into a karaoke booth to make out. Jin laughs and starts to leave the room.   
  
“I’ve got to shower,” he says on his way out. “I’ve got work.”   
  
“Oh,” Kame says. “Hey.” His tone is floating over the top of his voice like he’s trying too hard to sound light. “I wanted to talk to you about something. Will you have time later? I’ll buy you dinner.”   
  
Jin frowns. He doesn’t like the way Kame’s still holding his cup at his lips, liquid paused on the precipice of his tongue. “Is something wrong?” he asks suspiciously.   
  
Kame puts down the cup. “Of course not,” he says. “You’re going to be late for work.”   
  
-  
  
Three days a week Jin teaches music at the local primary school. He uses the simple games and exercises they’d used at the Jimusho, only without the extra lessons on hairstyling and making sexy faces when you sing. He plays guitar for the kids and they all sing together, big bright happy songs like Yellow Submarine and Hail to the Bus Driver. A few nights a week he tends bar at a pub in town, but he doesn’t like that nearly so much.   
  
He has a break after his morning lesson, between the grade 2-3 composite class and the grade fivers. There’s this little shit in his early class that spent the morning banging loudly on the drum he’d misappropriated from Nicole, perfect little Nicole Allen with her friendly smiles and Transformers t-shirt, and now Jin has a headache. He thumps his keyboard irritably when he checks his email.   
  
There’s a note from his mother begging him not to forget his Aunt’s birthday, some obnoxious forwarded chain mail from Taguchi, and the subscription to Asahi that he signed up for to seem adult but never reads. He’s about to delete it when he sees Kame’s name in the subject line. He clicks it before he registers the rest of the headline: _Johnny’s Entertainment Idol Kamenashi Kazuya (29) diagnosed with cancer._


	2. Part Two

A spokesman for the Jimusho has confirmed reports that Kamenashi-kun has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The popular idol has taken an indefinite leave of absence from the company and could not be reached for comment. Friends and bandmates have expressed confidence in Kamenashi’s ability to overcome the illness and ask the public to respect the privacy of the Kamenashi family during this difficult time.

-

Jin hides in the storage closet. 

He sits on the floor beside a big plastic tub of tambourines, the hard rounded edges digging into his side, filtered black in the spare light that filters through the cracks in the doors. He can hear the children shouting in the class next door, the deep rumble of chairs scraping on the floor. Pancreatic cancer, he thinks. Pancreatic.

He doesn’t even know what the pancreas does. 

“Don’t think about it,” he says aloud. It feels as if his stomach is filling up with sand, mixing into concrete in his belly. If he sits here long enough it will turn to stone and so will he. 

He closes his eyes. 

Jin’s first kiss was with a girl named Keiko-chan when he was twelve years old, but the first time he understood what kissing was all about he was fifteen years old and kissing Kame for the first time, pressing dry, uncoordinated lips to Kame’s stammer and feeling his heart boom do-ki-do-ki-do-ki-do. Kame was thirteen years old and had flushed patchy red and pink all over, like an apple with bushy eyebrows. Jin hadn’t tried it again for months but he’d thought about it, when they crowded into the bedroom he shared with Reio to practice singing and sexy faces, when he rode home from Kame’s place on his rusty old bike, every time Kame smiled his ridiculous squinty smile, every time he pouted or trembled or scowled. 

The second time, Kame kissed Jin: it was Jin’s sixteenth birthday party, and there were girls there, girls spilling out of their shirts in their enthusiasm to wish him a happy birthday, all pretty and forward and slutty in the kind of clumsy way Jin appreciated in girls, but only Kame kissed him, small hands making demanding fists in Jin’s hair. 

“Jin,” he’d murmured in terror when he pulled away and made Jin swear not to tell anybody. They could get in a lot of trouble, with their parents, their friends, with Johnny. With everyone. 

In the end, Jin was too excited and had to tell Yamapi or he’d tell everyone, but that was okay, Pi could be trusted. He knew that if Kame - or anybody else - found out, Jin would never speak to him again. Violently. 

After those first few months, when they’d skipped school and spent hours curled up together in Jin’s single bed, half the time just sleeping with foreheads touching, half the time with hands all over each other (but only above the waist, because Kame was a fucking tease), after that time when they’d grown twisted into each other like mangrove trees, it had never occurred to Jin that there was anyone or anything in the world that could ever take Kame away from him, not for good. Not the fans who’d begun to see a young and handsome prince emerging from Kame’s awkward childhood shell, not the little group of weird and volatile kids they were being forced into a unit with, not Johnny, not even Kame himself. He’d never doubted, after that, not ever, not when they barely spoke for months, not when he was half in love with some girl and Kame seemed to have a crush on Pi, not when Jin went to America, not when Jin went away for good. Deep down, Kame belonged to him, and nothing and nobody could take him away. 

In his closet, beside the tambourines, Jin presses the heels of his hands into the sockets of his eyes and sees stars. 

The principal finds him twenty minutes later when he fails to appear for his 11am class.

“Mr Akanishi --” she snaps, but then she must get a look at his face, because her blue eyes go soft and grandmotherly behind her strict titanium glasses. “Jin... is everything okay?”

Jin stares at her. It takes effort to understand the English.

“No,” he says, and presses his face to his knees. 

\- 

Mrs Westchester (he’s supposed to call her ‘Judy’ but he never can without feeling like he’s about to get detention) makes the P.E teacher drive him home. This is, Jin thinks, supposed to be a compassionate gesture, as Brian is the only other male on staff. He and Brian have never really liked each other, though. Jin wishes she’d asked Patty, the canteen lady, instead. Sometimes she sets aside cookies especially for him and brings them to his classroom when they’re still warm, honey melting comfortably into oat. 

“So...” Brian says, when the drive has stretched too long and silent for him to stand. He’s a big, burly guy with thick veins in his hairy forearms. Once he got drunk at a barbeque and asked Jin if he was a fag. “Uh, lady troubles, then, mate?”

“My friend is sick,” Jin says shortly. 

Brian slaps at a fly that is buzzing around his face. “Sick?” 

Jin feels carsick. He leans his head on the window. “He has cancer.”

“Shit,” Brian says. The car swerves slightly. “Shit.” He tsks air between his teeth. “Still,” he says, a layer of forced lightness in his broad accent. “Not a death sentence these days, eh?”

Jin ignores him. Kame wouldn’t come to him for anything but the worst case scenario. 

\- 

Kame’s sitting on the porch with Baxter and a big stack of paper when they pull into the drive. He’s wearing his thick superstar fur collared coat and gloves, but he’s still got on the red pajama pants underneath and his hair stands in disarray around his face, bangs scraped back behind his ears. 

“That him?” Brian asks. Kame looks up and his cat’s brows fold in confusion. 

“Yeah,” Jin says, and gets out of the car without saying thank you. 

“See you later, mate,” Brian calls as he drives away.

“Was that your friend?” Kame asks. He doesn’t stand up. “You’re early.” 

Jin stares at him, this kid he’s adored for twenty years, and sees the real exhaustion, now, in his brown eyes, beyond that slight edge of old man weariness that’s lived there since Kame was fifteen and their manager decided he was the Responsible One in KAT-TUN. 

Jin sits on the stair beside Kame’s knee and exhales the deepest breath he’s ever felt, like he’s suddenly tapped into every breath he’s ever held. He buries his face in Kame’s lap, shuddering when Kame sifts gloved fingers through his hair. 

“How did you find out?” Kame asks. 

Jin cries for a long time.

\- 

“Since when do you read the news?” Kame asks later, wiping at Jin’s salty cheeks with one of the aloe vera tissues he’d pulled from his voluminous pocket. Jin holds the tissues in his hands and stares down at the happy squirrel on the package. It’s been a long time since Jin cried and he feels damp and exhausted. He turns his face into Kame’s gentle, motherly fingers and sniffles.

“I’m an adult now, Kamenashi.” He tries to muster up the energy to sound indignant. “I am in touch with my social conscience.” 

“Baka.” Kame looks at him seriously. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to find out like that.” 

There’s not really any way Jin could find out that would make this any easier, no matter what Kame thinks. Jin’s initial reaction of blind terror would probably have just ended up with them locked in the closet together if Kame had told him in person. 

“Tell me everything,” Jin demands. 

\- 

Two months ago, the Jimusho doctor called Kame back for a consultation to discuss some routine blood work. Kame had only allocated fifteen minutes for the appointment, figuring the doctor would hassle him about his iron levels and order him to eat more spinach.

He was in Kurosawa-sensei’s office for two hours that afternoon. 

\- 

Jin is smoking on the verandah when Alice gets home, leaning hunchbacked over the railing, shoulder blades knitting together as if pulled by corset strings. 

“I thought you quit,” Alice says disapprovingly as she struggles up the stairs, grocery bags and manila folders tucked under her arm. 

Jin shrugs, swallowing the smoke and feeling it burn angrily at his insides.

“Hey,” he says. “If anyone weird calls the house looking for Kame, he’s not here, okay?” 

“Sure,” she says. “Is everything okay?”

He can’t tell her. “Just the stupid paparazzi chasing some dumb story. The usual. Don’t worry about it.” 

She kisses him warmly on the temple. He nuzzles his head into her comfort. 

“Your secret’s safe with me,” she says.

Jin lights another cigarette.

\- 

Kame told KAT-TUN first, before he told anybody else. He didn’t mean to, but they were on tour when the last of the tests confirmed the worst and he blurted it out in the middle of an argument.

They were all yelling at each other about something, no-one remembers what anymore. Probably the costumes or the choreography or hogging all the hot water. Something stupid. 

“I can’t deal with this bullshit right now,” Kame snapped suddenly, slamming his make up case closed. 

“We’re all stressed -” Taguchi started, but Kame cut him off. 

“I’m not stressed,” Kame shrieked hysterically, “I’m dying.”

He sat heavily on the nearest chair, smearing the last remnants of the night’s mascara as he wiped angrily at his tears. The others had never in all the years they’d known each other seen Kame cry over anything but dying animals in movies. They stared at him and at one another. 

“That’s a pretty sick way to win an argument,” Ueda said. 

\- 

Jin calls Nakamaru late at night, when he’s the only one awake. He sits on the kitchen bench with his feet propped up on a stool, huddling over the phone. It takes the line a few long moments to connect, signals struggling to bounce halfway across the world. When he answers, Nakamaru sounds harassed. 

“There are paparazzi camped outside my house,” he says. Jin imagines his mouth wide open in amazement. “I don’t think this has ever happened to me before.” 

“It’s like you’re a celebrity,” Jin jokes. 

“They’re vultures,” Nakamaru says darkly, and then, “Oh, shit, Jin. That was a poor choice of words.” 

“They can circle all they want,” Jin says, feeling almost hysterically belligerent all of a sudden. “He’s not going to die.” 

“Of course not,” Nakamaru says quickly. Jin knows him well enough to hear the slight hesitation, the nervous stammer, even before he blurts out, “But he’s really sick Jin.” 

The cancer has metastasized into Kame’s liver, his bile duct, his vertebrae, into all the secret nooks and crannies in his body that the doctor can’t find. A course of chemotherapy might improve his quality of life, they say. No one talks about the possibility of remission.

“I’ll take care of him,” Jin says. 

\- 

Jin crawls into bed behind Kame, wraps his arms tight around his chest. Holding him now, without the thick winter coat in the way, Jin can feel how small he is, like he’s fifteen again and waiting for his growth spurt. He buries his face in Kame’s hair. 

“You okay?” Kame asks, grumbling slightly but clasping his hand over Jin’s wrist and squeezing. He is only half awake, nestling fuzzily back into Jin’s warmth. 

“You’re mine,” Jin says into his ear. “God can’t have you.” 

“Hai,” Kame agrees, and goes back to sleep with Jin’s knuckles pressed to his lips. 

-

“Something is wrong, isn’t it?” Alice asks the next morning when he gets out of the shower. “You didn’t come to bed last night.” 

“I’m sorry,” Jin says sincerely. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep with Kame, he’d just wanted to lie there for a little bit. He bows a little, a habit he’s never quite broken. He takes her hand and twists the ring around her index finger. It’s silver with a thick black band of onyx through the centre. Her first boyfriend gave it to her when she was fifteen. 

“Jin?” she prods gently.

“Kame’s sick,” he admits. “Kame’s really sick.”

\- 

Jin visits his doctor and asks him dozens of questions about what is going to happen. He’s only been to see Dr. Weerasinghe a handful of times, but he’s got a friendly open face that Jin always found comforting, big brown eyes behind his reading glasses. He calls Jin “Mr. Akanishi” in a jovial voice but grows somber in the face of Jin’s tension.

He refuses to make any predictions as to Kame’s chances without seeing his medical records, but he seems kind of concerned that Kame has left his family and all the Japanese-speaking oncologists in Tokyo, like maybe he has had some kind of mental break. 

“He wouldn’t get any privacy there, because of the paparazzi,” Jin says. 

“Family is very important at a time like this,” the Doctor says carefully. “He will need them.”

“I’ll make sure he gets everything he needs,” Jin says stubbornly. 

-

Jin’s friends start showing up with six packs of beer tucked beneath their arms on Friday night. In all the drama he’s forgotten that they were coming and now he’s got nothing to feed them and Kame is totally unprepared. He smiles and shakes their boisterous hands when they crowd around him to be introduced, but Jin can see the edge of horror in his frantic hands as he combs them through his disheveled hair and tries to make it look like he hasn’t been sitting around in his pajamas all day like some kind of bum. When he turns his eyes on Jin his expression is blank with betrayal. Kame needs warning before he meets new people, even at the best of times. 

After a brief round of clumsy introductions, Kame excuses himself to get changed. When he doesn’t come back for ten minutes, then fifteen, Jin slips into the guest room to find him sitting on the bed, closet doors open and clothes in piles around him. He’s shirtless, bare shoulders broad but bony. 

“I don’t know what to wear,” he says, turning a red t-shirt over in his hands. “I want them to like me and it’s not like I can charm them with my sparkling wit.” 

“You couldn’t do that even if you did speak English,” Jin says with a charming smile. Kame scowls and throws the t-shirt he is holding at Jin’s face. It smells like Kame’s cologne and the same washing powder Jin’s mother used to use. 

“They won’t care what you wear,” Jin says. “They won’t even notice.”

Kame looks at him doubtfully. 

“Seriously,” Jin says, and starts scrunching up the t-shirt. He pulls it over Kame’s head, only becoming conscious of the sudden stumble into intimacy when the t-shirt rests like a scarf around Kame’s shoulders and they’re left standing still, breathing in each other’s spaces. 

When they emerge, Dan slaps Kame on the back, calls him “Kazza” and asks if he wants a beer, all of which is met by Kame’s polite confusion. He understands the bottle that is held out towards him, though, and takes it with a shy murmur of thanks. Jin notices that he twists the cap off the bottle and takes a sip but then just holds it for a long time, shifting it from hand to hand but not drinking. There are all sorts of things that the oncologist back in Japan said he should avoid; alcohol, caffeine, sugar, processed food, more or less everything even vaguely palatable, and Kame follows the instructions with ruthless determination. 

Later, when everyone else is crowded around three great slabs of pizza on the coffee table, Kame looks at Jin and says, “What is Kazza?”

“You are,” Jin laughs. “Baka.”

-

Jin takes to eating breakfast in Kame’s room in the morning, while Kame is still in bed and staring at him bleary eyed beneath his cave of blankets. He sits at the foot of the bed and stuffs huge spoonfuls of cereal in his mouth and chatters about his lesson plans, doing impressions of the kids to make Kame laugh.

Sometimes Alice stands in the doorway with her mug of coffee and listens, but Jin doesn’t know why. She doesn’t understand Japanese.

-

The letters started to arrive in sackfuls a week after Kame did; at first just standard fan letters scrawled in pink on Chibi Mariko-chan stationary, and then long, grief stricken epics, characters occasionally blurring illegible on pages spotted with dried tears.

Kame reads them somberly, face pale and hands gentle on the pages, sifting through them and picking out handfuls to read at a time. He couldn’t possibly get through them all.

Jin picks one up from the coffee table one night after Kame has gone to bed, slides his fingers inside the envelope slowly and carefully so Kame will never know. 

“What does it say?” Alice asks curiously. She’s curled up on the other couch, bare feet shoved beneath Baxter’s belly for warmth. 

“Nothing.” It’s a love letter. “I probably shouldn’t be reading it,” Jin says. “It’s an invasion of privacy.”

“They’re fan letters,” Alice says. The disbelief in her voice makes Jin shift uncomfortably, building defenses out of crossed arms and stiff shoulders.

“Some of these girls trust him more than they trust their own families.” He folds the letter carefully, brushing his thumb over the kanji written in painstakingly neat strokes across the front.

“Jin,” she says. “Don’t you think that’s a bit fucked up?”

“Well yeah,” Jin says. “I hated it. It’s so much responsibility. But Kame takes it really seriously.” 

Sometimes, when he’d been feeling grumpy and neglected, Jin had felt like the fans were Kame’s wife, or maybe his beloved children, and Jin his secret mistress. A mistress that Kame loved dearly, to whom he was unquestionably devoted, but one whose happiness would always come second to Kame’s responsibilities - his legions of nagging wives and needy children. 

Jin tried to tell Kame this, once, when they’d slept together for the first time in months, swept up in the excitement of preparations for their debut.

“It’s like I’m your mistress,” Jin said, lying flat on his back in Kame’s bed, legs wrapped up in Kame’s sheets. His family are out of town. “I’m always sitting around a love hotel in my trashy underwear waiting for you to slip away from your wife for a couple of hours.”

“We’ve never gone to a love hotel,” Kame said. 

Jin huffed. “Only because you’re afraid of the paparazzi.” 

Kame ignored him. “Also, you’re not a woman.”

“If I were you’d treat me better,” Jin said, “Instead of going out and throwing yourself at every fan you see.”

“Please,” Kame snapped. He was getting annoyed, trying to untwist his ankle from Jin’s calf. Jin dug his heels into the sheet so their cocoon would bind them together. “I’m way more faithful than you are.”

“Only because you won’t make an honest woman out of me,” Jin says. 

Kame sighed and let his forehead roll into Jin’s, looks at him through crossed brown eyes. “It won’t always be like this.” 

“Yeah?” Jin said. “One day you’ll take some time for yourself?”

What he meant was, one day you’ll take some time for me. 

“Yes,” Kame promised. He took Jin’s hand and laced their fingers together, twisted tightly between their hips. 

Jin turned on his side so he could see Kame properly, the worryingly slender line of his chest and his messy bed hair. He held Kame’s hand hard. “And I’ll be the wife?”

“Idiot,” Kame sighed.

“I’ll be the wife,” Jin insisted. 

“You’re already the wife,” Kame said, “but we have to plan for our future.”

-

In the middle of the night, Alice rolls over and slips cold fingers through the knot in the drawstring of Jin’s pajama pants, knuckles grazing the sensitive skin on his belly. He’s lying on his side facing away from her. She presses her face against his shoulder blade, rubs her nose across the bone. He tries not to yelp. It feels weird like his collarbone, but more remote.

“You awake?” she asks. He wraps his hand around hers, tries to slow her nimble fingers without revealing the anxiety he feels. Kame is in the next room. Kame is sick.

“Sort of,” he says. 

She scrapes blunt teeth against his shoulder blade and he does yelp this time, the muscles across his back contracting involuntarily. “Awake enough?” 

“I’m pretty tired,” he says awkwardly. 

She leans her head against his neck and sighs. 

\- 

Kame wanders out of the guest room one morning looking like he’s about to go on stage at Tokyo Dome; hair carefully pinned back on one side so his bangs drape delicately over high cheekbones dusted with a rosy shimmer. His lips are glossy and his eyes sparkle sleepily behind the sweep of his slutty dark lashes. Jin chokes on his cereal and Alice glowers at him as if she can read his mind.

“Do I look sick?” Kame asks. He’s holding a tiny camcorder in his right hand. It probably cost more than Jin’s monthly rent, but Kame doesn’t have to buy things anymore, people just give them to him. 

“No,” Jin says. Kame grunts in satisfaction and turns the camera on, panning slowly around the room.

“What are you doing?” Jin asks.

“Trying to find the best light,” Kame replies. 

Jin scowls. He is so infuriating sometimes. Having Kame around the house reminds Jin of why they used to fight so much. “More generally,” he prompts. 

“Making a VTR,” Kame says. “Pi’s going to air it tonight.”

Jin stands and follows Kame into the living room, aware of Alice’s curious gaze following his back. He feels an old familiar surge of protectiveness, harried and territorial. When it comes to Kame he has always been indignantly overbearing, and he knows it, and he’s not sorry. If Kame would listen to him occasionally he wouldn’t be so strung out all the time, and then Jin would be happy, and that would make Kame happy too. 

“Is that going to be okay?” Jin asks. “You shouldn’t force yourself if it is too soon.” 

Kame rolls his eyes. “It’s just a VTR, Jin. I could do one in my sleep.” 

“Don’t be an idiot,” Jin says. “If you’re not like, ready, or if you think you’ll freak out --” 

“I have responsibilities,” Kame says, looking vaguely confused as if he has trouble understanding why Jin would ever even consider making such a crazy suggestion. 

“Kame,” Jin says, but Kame just grins and makes clumsy rabbit ears with the fingers wrapped over the top of his camera. 

“It’s okay,” he says, and walks out onto the verandah. 

Kame makes him hold the camera as he speaks and Jin tries to focus on holding it steady so he won’t have to really listen to Kame’s words or see the promise in his superstar smile. Kame’s always been a little bit different in front of the camera, not a stranger but not quite himself, either; earnest but not open, sincere but not too honest. He tells the fans that he loves them and that he’ll be home soon. He apologises for making them worry and makes them promise they’ll watch Nakamaru’s new drama. He is smiling, sparkling, brave Kamenashi. He’ll make everybody’s dreams come true. 

He signs off with a smile and a wave, but drops his head into his hands the second the red light flickers off, an exhausted lump on Jin’s front step. 

“It’s okay,” he says when Jin puts both his hands on Kame’s shoulders, when his thumbs up his neck and behind his ears. “I’m okay.” 

“I know,” Jin says. “You did great.” 

 

-

 

Alice leaves. She says she’s going to stay at her best friend’s place just for a couple of days, to give them some space, but Jin knows she won’t be back. She takes all her stuff and the bathroom is all full of men’s things now, disposable razors and dark-bottled cologne. Jin sleeps in his empty bed and feels scared and lonely, but he doesn’t think she was wrong.


	3. Part Three

They go to a hospital in Newcastle where there’s an oncologist who speaks semi-fluent Japanese. He tries to explain as much as he can about the drug and its side effects, what they can expect, but everybody responds differently to chemotherapy, he says. Kame should expect flu-like symptoms, he says. He should be prepared for hair loss, just in case. He should be ready to feel worse than he’s ever felt in his life. 

It makes him really sick, grey and pale and shivering with fever. His skin breaks out in a blotchy red rash across his chest and shoulders, burning bumpy roads down his legs. He has to force himself to eat. A couple of times, Jin catches him carefully examining his hair, but it remains as thick and beautiful as ever, a taunting presence atop his gaunt and sickly body. 

He vacillates wildly between almost suffocating sweetness and affection and meaningless, childish rage; one minute he’ll be turning his beautiful face into Jin’s hand and thanking him for everything, the next he’s cold and remote and shatters into tantrums that make goosebumps break out down the back of Jin’s arms. It’s the headaches that make him angriest, he says, headaches that crawl up the back of his neck and push soft-tipped fingers through his eardrums and out his eyeballs. After the outbursts he is always quiet and exhausted, balefully staring at Jin with big eyes and clutching the blanket Jin wraps carefully around his shrunken shoulders, slipping into a deep and miserable sleep. 

The next morning he is always conciliatory, getting up and making Jin coffee if he feels up to it. 

Jin is relatively patient with the tantrums; they seem ripped out of him like emotional vomit, a forceful expulsion of the terror that is eating him up as quickly as the disease. 

It’s the quiet dark that Jin can’t stand, the storm clouds that gather over his head while Jin’s at work, the lightning that gathers on the tip of his tongue, ready for Jin when he walks in the door. Jin tries, he tries really hard, to be patient and calm and serene like Mother Theresa, but Kame knows him better than anybody, knows how to slither inside his secret weaknesses and tear him up. 

Jin doesn’t understand him. He doesn’t understand what Kame is doing; can’t read the look in Kame’s eyes as his tongue slices Jin to bloody pieces. Jin’s seen that look before, but never with so little provocation. He’d seen it the first time he’d slept with somebody that wasn’t Kame, when Kame had walked in and out on them without a word. He’d seen it when he’d announced his departure for LA. He’d deserved it then. He’s done nothing now.

One day Jin’s rushing to help Kame out of his chair when Kame snaps and shoves his arm away. “Jesus, leave me alone,” he spits. “I don’t need you to do every little thing.” 

“I’m just trying to help,” Jin says through gritted teeth. 

“Why don’t you go help Uehara Takako?” Kame sneers, and that’s just. That’s just fucking retarded. Jin hasn’t spoken to Uehara-san in years.

“She’s in Japan,” Jin says, instead of saying ‘you are a gigantic moron and I don’t know why I love you so much’. 

“Well I bet she still needs your help more than I do,” Kame says, trying to march a little beyond Jin’s reach. They only got back from the hospital late last night, so he barely makes it the few steps to the other sofa before collapsing breathlessly. Jin takes a step towards him and Kame flinches away. 

“What are you doing?” Jin asks, throwing down his fists in frustration. “I don’t care if you have cancer, stop being mean to me!”

He storms out and sits on the beach with his toes buried in the sand. He wishes he could talk to Alice; she’s really good at this stuff because she’s a girl and has read a lot about her feelings. He wants somebody to explain Kame to him, step by step, piece by piece, wants someone to show him how to take him apart and put him back together happier than before. 

It’s a beautiful day. The sun hangs low and lazy in the sky, twinkling over calm blue sea. Jin wishes Kame were in a better mood so he could come out here and they could stretch out on the sand and soak up the sun like lizards.

Jin goes home when he gets bored and lonely. 

Kame’s sitting in the living room with a bunch of suitcases. The sight makes Jin’s heart explode in panicked hummingbird beats. “You’re not going anywhere,” he blurts. 

“I know,” Kame says. His head drops back against the cushions and his limbs curl like noodles. “I was furious and I started rushing around packing everything. I was totally going to be on the next flight back to Tokyo. But now I’m too exhausted to move.” 

“I won’t let you go anywhere,” Jin says, and drags the suitcase back into Kame’s bedroom. “I’m taking you hostage.” 

He comes back into the living room and looks at Kame for a long time. 

“Do you think you can talk to me without the attitude now?” Jin asks, as if Kame is a small, obnoxious child. Part of him revels in being able to act like the mature one for once. In a different situation, he might gloat about it a little. “What’s going on?”

Kame doesn’t really meet his eyes. His fingers pull fretfully at the knees of his jeans, at the worn threads around the holes. 

“There are just these moments when I can’t stand the sight of you,” he says miserably. “The whole time you’re gone I wish you were here but when you come back I just can’t look at you.” 

“Why?” Jin asks. “Have I done something?” 

“No,” Kame says. “You haven’t done anything.” 

“Don’t you love me anymore?” Jin asks, even though he knows that isn’t true, that can’t be true, it isn’t possible. 

“Shut up,” Kame says. “Shut up, don’t talk like that. I don’t know why.” 

Jin kneels on the floor between Kame’s feet. “Can you look at me now?” he asks. 

Kame puts his hands on Jin’s cheeks and smoothes his thumbs beneath moist eyelashes, along the high ledge of a cheekbone. “Jin,” he says, and kisses him.

The first time they are together after so long apart, it’s not the best sex they have ever had. Jin is measured and careful, tension drawn tight and nervous in his muscles, and Kame’s involvement is more or less limited to lying there and moaning, but it still feels like magic to Jin.

When they were younger, Kame was always inhibited in bed, at first. He’d carefully school his facial expressions to only show the good side, the soft, demure side everybody told him was pretty. Jin hated that; he liked Kame’s dorky, open mouthed and ugly side and he’d do everything he could to press it out of him, until his eyes were screwed up and his cheeks were flushed and he looked like the Kazuya that only belonged to Jin.

“You’re so sexy,” he’d say to Kame then, only back then his Japanese accent was thicker and he’d say, se-ku-shii, eyes wide and earnest. He always meant it, too. Even before other people noticed Kame was the hottest thing in the world to him, for reasons he’d never quite understood, even then. They’d been so young; when he looks at photos now it is hard to imagine finding that skinny, gawky kid so entrancing; only 13 years old and still moving awkwardly out of childhood. He had though, had found himself watching the broken line of Kame’s nose out of the corner of his eye, the slant of his slim waist. He’d loved the way Kame smelled, like old men’s bath salts and women’s shampoo. He’d thought about Kame that way for ages before either of them ever made a move.

Jin keeps trying to hold his weight off Kame, balanced precariously with biceps taut. He’s conscious of Kame’s ribs that curve starkly away from his belly, the muscles that dissolve day by day. Kame seems fragile now, like his skin is made of moth’s wings. Kame tries to pull him down, but Jin remains stubbornly trembling on his wrists and knees, shoulders aching with the effort of leaning down for a kiss. Kame makes a noise of annoyance and jams his elbow into Jin’s splayed fingers. Jin shrieks as he tumbles down.

“You idiot, I’ll crush you,” he says, but Kame just rumbles happily like a contented cat.

“Not gonna,” he says, nuzzling against Jin’s jaw and sliding his palms flat and slow up Jin’s back. Kame always liked this, even at the very beginning when sex was still kind of strange and uncomfortable. Jin exhales the breath he’d been holding and lets the rest of his weight hold Kame down, muscles melting over his limbs. Kame sighs in delight. “I missed you,” he says. “Jin, I really missed you.” 

-

When Jin leaves for work the next day, he kisses Kame goodbye, wraps his arms around him and hugs him tight with his whole body. Kame grunts irritably and pulls the covers up higher, tighter, disappearing in a mount of blue striped cotton. They only finally drifted off to sleep together about four hours ago, Jin lying comfortably in the crook of Kame’s arm. He should be exhausted, but he’s not. He feels energised, like his heart is sparkling. 

All day, everything seems beautiful. He can’t see anything but the midwinter sun slanting through the murky clouds, the dazzling glimpse of blue beyond. His students are perfect little darlings who sing with the sweet harmony of a choir of angels. His coffee is perfect, the egg and lettuce sandwich he buys from the canteen for lunch tastes amazing, and Kame’s going to be all right. They’re going to be together, he thinks. Really, for the first time in their lives. 

\- 

There’s a staff meeting after school that runs well into the evening. Everyone is arguing over some dispute Jin can’t quite pay attention to, voices rising higher and higher as statistics are thrown around, words like curriculum and discipline and assessment. Jin sits quietly and scratches drawings of Dragonballs all over his notes, thinking about going home and cooking dinner, about curling into Kame in bed.

When he gets home, the house is dark and Kame has locked himself in the guest room. Jin doesn’t see him for two days. 

-

Jin meets Alice for dinner on a Wednesday night after work. When he arrives at their regular pizza place, the owner kisses his cheek and asks if he’s waiting for his ‘beautiful girlfriend’, and he starts to wish he’d chosen somewhere else to meet. He’s early and has to sit alone at the little corner table, rolling and unrolling his serviette. 

Alice looks the same when she walks through the door, and that surprises him. It’s only been a few weeks but his Japanese girlfriends had always been shockingly transformed in the days after a breakup he’d run into them in Shibuya and they’d have bleached their hair blonde and cropped it close to their jaw. Alice’s familiarity is jarring. Part of him wants her to look like a girl he’s never loved.

She sits down and folds her napkin neatly on her lap, immediately orders a red wine. They sit with stiff shoulders until it arrives, and then Jin blurts, “Do you hate me?”

She scowls. “You’re not supposed to ask that.”

“Why not?” he asks. 

“You’re just not!” she says, arms wrapped tightly around her elbows. She hunches forward and takes a fast, desperate sip of wine. “Like how I’m not supposed to ask if you’re sleeping with him.” 

“You can ask, if you want,” Jin says. Nella walks towards them with her order pad but takes a detour at the last minute, probably when she sees them at battle stations; Jin’s spine straight, his hands tracing sheepish circles on his sleeves, Alice’s wine glass dangling insolently between her fingers.

“I don’t want to ask,” she says sourly. 

“He’s barely speaking to me,” Jin says miserably. He’s not sure what he wants from her; some sympathy, maybe, for her to soothe him with her gentle voice and soft woman’s hands.

Instead, she snorts. “It doesn’t count if you’re only not doing it because he won’t put out.” 

“You do hate me,” he says. The thought makes his tummy turn and his shoulders slump. 

The restaurant is growing full of families with noisy children but they are trapped in a world of their own silence, until she says, “Only sometimes.” 

Jin winces. “I’m sorry.” 

She huffs and he can feel her leg shaking anxiously under the table. When they were together that used to drive him crazy, and sometimes he’d trap her foot underneath his just so she’d stop. He pulls his own feet back under his chair, almost shyly. 

“ It was like being in one of those movies where everyone is pretending they don’t know the two big stars are going to end up together at the end. Every time I looked at you, you were looking at him. I mean, you’re sort of creepy, Jin, you know that? And it was seriously pathetic because I just thought, I wish he was that creepy for me.” Her hands scratch nervous patterns on the table cloth, stars and hearts scratched out in slight ripples in the fabric. “I thought maybe we were going to spend the rest of our lives together and -- I mean, obviously, you never wanted that.” She sounds a little subdued the way people do when they’ve run out of hysteria; voice winding down from the peak of panic. “It made me feel like an idiot.” 

“Not the rest of our lives,” Jin admits. This is probably the most adult conversation they have ever had; they’d never really talked about their future, and Jin had never really thought about if they had one. “A long time, maybe.” 

She sniffles a little. “So like, what, we’d have got married and had kids and grown old and fat together, and then he’d have retired and you’d have abandoned me to die miserable and alone.” She laughs a little and Jin tries not to move or breath or do anything that might constitute a reaction of any kind. “Ugh,” she says finally, scrubbing her hands over her face. “I need pizza.” 

They share a family sized Capricciosa so loaded down with toppings that the slices bend under their own weight; they talk about normal things - Baxter, a friend’s new girlfriend, work, the weather. Every now and then silence falls and Jin has to pretend to concentrate on scraping excess ham off his pizza. He still can’t really look her in the eye. 

After dinner, he walks her to her car and they stand together in the street. In the light of a streetlamp a seagull fishes through a rubbish bin for some grilled flake and chips, and she says, “How’s he doing?” 

Jin rolls his head back to look up at the sky. You can see more stars here than he’d ever been able to even dream in Tokyo, but they’re still scattered and weak like their fires are dying out.

“Who knows,” he says. 

-

When he gets home, Kame is reading in the bath. Baxter is asleep on the bath mat, the ends of his fur curling in the steam. 

“Hey,” Kame says when he sees Jin leaning in the doorway. The bath is full of bubbles that cling to his arms and travel up the back of his neck. “How was your date?” 

“It wasn’t a date,” Jin says. He feels sulky because Kame doesn’t look jealous at all. “We broke up.” 

Kame’s eyes snap up. It’s the first time he’s looked at Jin in days but he doesn’t look happy. His dark eyes are narrower even than usual. He looks like Voldemort. 

“What?” he hisses. “Why?”

“You need me,” Jin says. 

“You’re an idiot,” Kame spits. “Just. Get the fuck out of here.” 

When Jin doesn’t move, he shudders in fury and throws his book as hard as he can, which isn’t very far. It falls in an undignified mess a few inches from Jin’s feet. 

“Just leave me alone,” Kame says, curling away from Jin’s hand when he settles on the side of the tub and slides his fingers through Kame’s wet hair. “Please. Just leave me alone.”

“No,” Jin says, and stays. 

-

Jin starts to attend support group meetings in the community hall at the local church. Everyone else there has cancer and at first Jin awkwardly tries to pretend that he does too, because it occurs to him too late that his presence might be breaking some kind of taboo; his health violating their illness. He slumps a little in his hard plastic chair and hopes nobody will pay attention to him. He just wants to listen, because Kame won’t talk.

He quickly realises that it’s one of those things where everyone takes a turn, though, and his stomach starts to rumble in anxiety the way it used to when he was a little kid in class and it was almost his turn to read aloud. He rubs his hands on his knees as the speakers get closer and closer until the woman next to him is talking about ovarian cancer, about how she’ll never have children the normal way. Jin purses his lips and then suddenly everyone is staring at him with their pale faces, their headscarves and sunken cheeks. 

“I don’t have cancer,” he blurts immediately, only it comes out in Japanese. Sometimes he does that when he panics; when people are yelling at him or depending on him or watching him too closely. He feels his cheeks burst into red when everybody just stares at him.

“I mean, I don’t have cancer,” he repeats. “My friend does.” 

“There’s a family support day on Thursday,” this guy says. Jin thinks his name is Tom. He’s about fifty and balding and irritable in that overbearing alcoholic father way. He’s always huffing righteously whenever somebody cries. 

“I don’t need support,” Jin says awkwardly. He rubs the side of his nose. “I need to know how to support him.” 

“There’s not some answer we can give you that only we know,” Mary says at length. She is one of those women who look like they’ve never been exposed to the real world; nails neatly filed and slacks neatly pressed, hair curving a perfect wave over her ear. She has breast cancer. “We’re all amateurs, like you. You know him better than we do.” 

“Mary,” Mrs. Collins clucks. That’s what her name tag calls her, Mrs Collins, as if she doesn’t have a first name. “The poor child just wants some advice.”

“He’s not a child,” Tom grumbles. 

Jin feels like a child. The adults are arguing over his head like he’s back in the jimusho.

“All I want is to help him,” he says. “I’ll do anything.” 

“Does he know that?” Mary asks.

“Yes,” Jin says. “But he’s a moron and he won’t let me.”

“You need to make him realise,” Vincent says. It’s the first time he’s spoken all evening; he is identified only by the scrawling letters in black across his name tag. 

“Realise?” Jin repeats dumbly.

“The obvious,” Vincent says. “It’s more important to have a happy life than a happy ending. Anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot.” 

\- 

They drive a few hours up the coast to a little farm just outside of Byron Bay to a see a natural healer. Jin’s not sure where Kame got her name but he seems optimistic about it; he’s in a good mood when they set off, sitting with his feet propped on the dash and occasionally singing along to the radio. Jin joins in to fill the holes in the songs where Kame doesn’t seem to know the words. The sound of their voices settling together makes Jin’s heart beat faster. 

Kame’s wearing a pair of sunnies pushed high onto his head, bangs pushed away from his eyes and spilling over the aviator frames. His natural colour is showing at the roots, a solid line of almost black blurring into chocolate brown. 

“It’s so beautiful here,” Kame sighs, eyes far out to sea. It’s a gloomy day out, clouds gathering heavy and grey on the horizon. The sky washes the ocean silver, waves rolling to brilliant peaks. 

“We’ll have to come back in summer,” Jin says. “When you’re feeling better.”

“Mmm,” Kame agrees, stretching out his arms, luxuriously cracking each knuckle one by one. The sound makes Jin shiver. Kame shifts in his seat a little, angles his shoulders to face Jin. “Where’s the best place in the world?”

“Japan,” Jin replies automatically. That makes Kame laugh with apparent delight and Jin smiles as broadly as he possibly can, feeling his bottom lip quiver with the exertion of expressing his pleasure. 

“Where else?” Kame asks. There’s a rap song playing on the radio, something dark and heavy, punctuated by the sound of gunfire and blaring sirens. It doesn’t suit the mood. Jin is relieved when Kame reaches out to flip the station and finds something upbeat with brass instruments and clapping hands. 

He thinks about the question. When he left Japan, the papers went nuts with rumours about how he hated Kame, hated KAT-TUN, was desperate for escape. The truth was, he loved Kame, loved KAT-TUN. He’d loved being an idol and stepping out onto stage and feeling his smile answered by an ocean of adoring fans. There were things he’d hated, sure, like 4am make up calls and the crazy fans who stole things out of his mailbox, but that wasn’t why he’d left. 

He’d wanted to see the world beyond the jimusho’s walls; the big wide world full of people he didn’t understand. 

So he went everywhere, or tried to. At first he’d been determined to visit every continent, until he’d realised that would involve going to Antarctica. He doesn’t understand the point of a place with a bunch of snow and bears and no people. 

He’s not sure if he’s given up on the idea of going everywhere or if he’s just resting. 

“I like it here,” Jin says. “Everyone here is really lazy.”

“So here, then?” Kame asks curiously. 

“No,” Jin says. “I don’t know though. Everywhere I went I thought, ‘this must be the most awesome place in the world’. Except Germany. Fucking Germany.” 

“What happened in Germany?” 

“I don’t know.” He taps his fingers on the steering wheel, a nervous tat-tat-tat. “Everyone there looks at you funny. I missed home a lot while I was there.” He grips the wheel in white fists. "It wasn't Germany though, it was me."

Kame studies him searchingly, then looks at his hands. “Did you ever regret leaving?” 

“Oh yeah, all the time!” Jin laughs. “Something would happen and I’d think, ‘this wouldn’t happen to me in Japan.’ Or I’d read the news and there’d be some rumour that you’d knocked up a member of Morning Musume and you were getting married and I’d think, ‘maybe it’s true this time!’. And then I’d freak out and try to book a ticket home. But I couldn’t come home just because I was scared, right? That’d be so lame.” 

Kame smiles at him gently. “When you first left I sort of thought you might be back two weeks later.”

Jin snickers. “So did I!” He looks at Kame out of the corner of his eye, and then back at the road. The road curves with the line of the coast. “But whenever I was really lonely I thought, ‘I’ll bring Kame here one day’. And then I had the courage to keep going.”

He looks at Kame again, carefully; his eyes are glassy and wet and he keeps swallowing and trying to look manly and Jin thinks, fuck it. He’s not going to get a better opportunity than this. Even Kame won’t try to escape from a moving vehicle. 

“Are we going to talk about us?” Jin asks. 

Kame groans and buries his face in his palms like Jin is the most annoying and repetitive person in the world, even though they haven’t talked about them since they slept together. “No,” he says. 

“Yes we are,” Jin says. 

“I don’t want to,” Kame says. 

“Maa, who cares,” Jin replies. “We’re gonna.” 

“I just don’t think there’s much point right now.” His voice is tight with frustration. He scrubs at his face. 

“I want to be with you,” Jin says. “Properly, now. We’ve never been together properly ever.” 

“The timing isn’t right.” Kame slides his sunglasses down over his eyes because he thinks that will stop Jin from reading him, but it won’t. Jin knows his every muscle and twitch. 

“You never think the timing is right,” Jin grumbles. 

“Well it never is,” Kame says. He crosses his arms stiffly. “If I don’t get better, it’ll make it harder on you.” 

Jin feels a startling surge of rage and spits, “Fuck you. FUCK YOU. God, I hate you so much sometimes.”

Kame’s entire body goes shuttered and blank and he turns his gaze out the window, like as far as he is concerned Jin isn’t even there anymore. 

“I never knew you were capable of being such a pussy,” Jin says. 

“Excuse me?” Kame spits indignantly, whirling in his seat. “I am not a pussy.” 

“Yes you are!” Jin hollers. “YOU ARE YOU ARE YOU ARE. I LOVE YOU AND YOU LOVE ME, AND I’M GOING TO BE YOUR BOYFRIEND NOW, AND THAT’S ALL THERE IS TO IT, SO JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND HOLD MY HAND ON THIS NICE PEACEFUL DRIVE, YOU ASSHOLE, BECAUSE YOU ARE STUCK WITH ME FOREVER.”

He grabs Kame’s hand and tugs it forcefully to rest on his thigh. Kame sulks and his knuckles turn white, but he doesn’t let go. 

When they get out of the car, Jin crowds Kame up against the bonnet and promises, “I’ll be your reason for living.” 

“You moron,” Kame says, sniffling a little bit. “You already are.”


	4. Part Four

The healer’s name is Margaret and she gives Kame some kind of mysterious potion that costs $500 a week. She refuses to tell them what is in it but it is dark green and syrupy and smells like swamp. He has to drink it twice a day, nose pinched to keep out the smell. She gives him all kinds of nuts and seeds and essences; a huge bag of black market apricot kernels, which he has to munch on throughout the day. They have cyanide inside, and supposedly they’ll kill the cancer cells. They taste like strange almonds. Jin can taste them in his mouth whenever they kiss.   
  
Kame’s Australian oncologist is difficult about the whole idea and keeps sternly telling them not to get their hopes up. “What harm can it do?” Jin asks.  
  
“These things can have terrible side effects,” the doctor says irritably.  
  
“Like chemo?” Jin says innocently.  
  
The Japanese doctor Kame was seeing back home is more optimistic. Every morning Kame carefully grinds up his seeds and berries and eats them by the handful.   
  
-  
  
Jin gets fired from his bar-tending job. He’s not really surprised, he’s only made it to a handful of his shifts since Kame arrived. He doesn’t really care, either. The job was fun at first, when he passed the quiet time teaching himself to make elaborate cocktails and practicing his English with the drunken clientele. The novelty wore off fast, though; most people are too cheap to actually order the cocktails and almost everyone is a total asshole when they’re drunk. So really, he’s not too concerned. He’s got more important things to do anyway.   
  
Kame does not share his nonchalance.   
  
“What?” he screeches, struggling to his elbows in his flannel nest of sheets. “ _Fired?_ ”  
  
Kame has never been fired from anything in his life and the idea clearly fills him with inexpressible horror; his face is a perfect portrait of panic, eyebrows arching all the way to his hairline over lips pinched and white with dismay.   
  
“It’s no big deal,” Jin says with a shrug.”   
  
“You were _fired,_ ” Kame says. “How is that not a big deal? What are you going to do for money?”  
  
Jin rolls his eyes. “I’ve lived on less.”  
  
Kame looks at him hard; Jin lifts his chin defiantly. Kame can’t make him worry about this. He is cool, calm, and collected.  
  
“Give me my phone,” Kame says finally. Jin reaches for it automatically but stops when it is in his grasp.  
  
“Why?” he asks suspiciously.   
  
“I’m going to call my accountant.”   
  
Jin scowls and slips the phone into his back pocket, retreats from the foot of the bed in case Kame makes some kind of crazy lunge for it.  
  
“No,” he says.  
  
“Jin,” Kame says impatiently, arm outstretched, palm up.   
  
“You can’t call him so early,” Jin says reasonably.   
  
“It’s only noon,” Kame says. His arm is trembling a little from the exertion.   
  
“There’s a time difference,” Jin offers.   
  
“It’s only one hour!” Kame snaps, finally giving up and letting his arm collapse to the mattress beside him. His reaction to this last round of injections was worse than the others, and he hasn’t been more than a few steps beyond the bed in days. “Give me my fucking phone.”   
  
“I don’t need your money,” Jin says.   
  
“You were always happy to take my money before,” Kame accuses. “You used to charge me 100 yen to borrow your hair drier.”   
  
“I’m a man now,” Jin says proudly. “I can take care of you. Stop emasculating me.”   
  
Kame stares at him in transparent outrage. “ _You’re_ emasculating _me_ ,” he hisses.   
  
“But you’re sick,” Jin says gently.   
  
“That doesn’t mean I don’t want to take care of you, you selfish asshole.” His arms are crossed and his head sinks down into his shoulders like a little kid throwing a tantrum. “I know I’m totally useless now but at least I still have money.”   
  
He stares moodily at his hands, the scowl engraving deep ridges in his brow. He closes his eyes like it hurts too much to keep them open.   
  
Stricken, Jin sits on the bed beside him and says, “You always look after me.”   
  
Dark eyes open. “You always look after me, too.”   
  
Jin slides the phone out of his pocket and turns it over in his hands. There’s a little sticker of a cartoon bluebird on the front. Kame’s nephew stuck it there back in Japan; it is turning faded and grey around the edges.   
  
“You can’t pay for everything,” Jin says, then hands Kame the phone. “But I guess we could share.”   
  
-  
  
Brian comes up to Jin after school one day and tugs on his arm until Jin follows him to the carpark. They sit in Brian’s beat up old Holden in awkward silence. When Brian leans towards him, Jin is a bit suspicious that all of Brian’s macho homophobic Australian bullshit was just bluster and now he’s going to try to give Jin a handjob or something, but then Brian clears his throat in a stammering kind of a way and pulls a brown paper bag from the glovebox. He hands it to Jin with a little grunt of satisfaction.   
  
Jin stares at it. It weighs barely nothing at all, like it might be full of looseleaf tea.   
  
“It’s pot,” Brian says as if that should be obvious. “I heard your friend wasn’t doing so great.”   
  
Jin stares at him quizzically.  
  
“It’s supposed to help,” Brian says. “With the pain, yeah? And the nausea.”   
  
The thought is kind of sweet, but Jin is still suspicious. He feels a bit panicky and irritable like Brian is just trying to confuse him and then he’ll ambush him with some kind of insane prank, like maybe this whole thing will finish with Jin getting fired.   
  
“He’s not my friend,” he says. “He’s my lover.”   
  
“But I thought you had that really hot girlfriend!” Brian bursts, surprised.  
  
“Well now I have a really hot boyfriend,” Jin reasons.   
  
“Oh,” Brian says. He swallows nervously. “Oh. Ah well. To each their own, I guess?”   
  
“Yeah,” Jin agrees darkly. He lifts the bag to smell it; he hasn’t smoked pot in years but it smells rich and green like soil, like he remembers.   
  
“My brother’s sister in law is a lesbian,” Brian says.   
  
Jin ignores him. “How much do I owe you for this?” he asks, lifting the bag.   
  
“Nothing,” Brian says, clapping Jin on the shoulder like they’re good mates. “Nah, really, man,” he says even though Jin didn’t protest. “It’s my little brother’s homegrown. He needs to cut back on that shit anyway, he’s already a functioning retard.”   
  
“Thanks,” Jin says, and gets out of the car.   
  
“I hope it helps,” Brian says sincerely.  
  
He’s not such a bad guy, really.   
  
-  
  
“No,” Kame says. When Jin took the bag out of his satchel and handed it to Kame, it had taken him a minute to realise what it was. Then he’d yelped and thrown it across the room like Jin had just handed him a sack of poisonous snakes. “Absolutely not.”   
  
“It’s medicinal,” Jin says helpfully.   
  
“Sure, I’d feel better, but then they’d throw me in prison for like fifty years.”  
  
“Nah,” Jin says, taking out the papers and starting to roll a joint. “This isn’t Japan. The cops probably wouldn’t even care.”   
  
“Marijuana use has been linked to mental illness,” Kame says.   
  
“It’ll be fine,” Jin promises. He holds the joint out to Kame. “Trust me. It’ll help you feel better.”   
  
After a long minute in which Kame bites his lips and creases his brow and shifts anxiously from side to side, he finally says, “You go first. I don’t want to go to prison alone.”   
  
Jin laughs and lights up, takes a hit; Kame watches in fascination, eyes wide. It reminds Jin a bit of the first time they shared a cigarette. Jin and Pi had stolen them from Tackey’s deck when he wasn’t looking and they’d all shared them in Pi’s room when his mother wasn’t home. Kame had coughed and spluttered a lot at first but he ended up smoking compulsively for two or three years before suddenly deciding to quit one day. Jin doesn’t think he’s smoked since.   
  
“It smells weird,” Kame says, wrinkling his nose as he takes the joint. He holds it awkwardly, fingers a nervous claw around the bulging paper.   
  
“Have you seriously never tried it?” Jin asks, surprised. He always forgets that Kame’s youth was not half as misspent as his, because when he thinks back on his adolescence, Kame’s face is all he sees.   
  
“I am a role model,” Kame says self importantly. He tentatively puts the joint between his lips and breathes deep. Jin lies on his back at Kame’s side and stares up at the light fixtures; he should probably dust in here, there are cobwebs stretching vague patterns across the ceiling.   
  
“You’re a goody two shoes,” Jin says.   
  
They lie there smoking in silence for a while. Jin listens as Kame’s breathing gets deeper and feels his muscles relaxing, limbs uncurling and spilling over Jin’s.   
  
“Do you still feel like you’re gonna puke?” Jin asks.   
  
“No,” Kame says. He giggles a little. “I’m good.”   
  
Jin rolls over and rests his head on Kame’s belly. Kame starts fiddling with his hair, twisting locks between his fingers, forming pathways along his scalp.   
  
Jin thinks they might fall asleep for a little while; he’s not sure but one minute the evening sky is grey-blue and the next it is pitch black. He slides his hand over Kame’s t-shirt and pulls it up a little so he can touch the skin on Kame’s flat lower belly. It feels soft, like the inside of a rose.   
  
“You should get a tattoo,” Jin says, nuzzling Kame’s hipbone with his nose.   
  
“Yeah?” Kame says. He still looks totally spaced out, but the fingers that glide along Jin’s shoulders tell Jin he has Kame’s attention. Mostly.   
  
“My name, across here,” Jin says, and rubs his thumb in a slow line between his hips.   
  
“Okay,” Kame says compliantly. Jin grins and fishes a marking pen out of his bedside drawer; sits up and straddles Kame’s thighs. Kame smiles up at him, serene.  
  
“You sure about this, baby?” Jin asks, uncapping the marker. Kame just laughs some more and looks up at Jin challengingly, shifting his hips a little. He’s half-hard, which hasn’t happened in a while. “Okay?” Jin says. Kame nods. “Okay.”   
  
Jin pushes the marker in strong, careful lines beneath Kame’s belly button; spells out J I N ♥ in English letters.   
  
“I love you,” Kame says, and drifts off to sleep.   
  
-  
  
Kame finishes up the course of chemotherapy and slowly starts to get better; the nausea eases and Kame starts to look a little more like himself, gaunt collarbones filling in with flesh and rosy pink apples growing in his cheeks.   
  
His blood work shows some improvement, or at least that’s what Jin understands, boiling the long words and medical jargon down to their simplest form. The oncologist seems pleased in his harried, pessimistic kind of way.   
  
“This isn’t a clean bill of health,” he tells Jin. “We need to give his body time to recover before we attempt a second course of radiation.”  
  
“But the results are good,” Jin urges.   
  
“They’re _better_ ,” the doctor says carefully.   
  
-  
  
Kame’s still on a long list of prescriptions, plus the nuts and herbs his witch doctor gave him. He takes them one by one in the mornings while Jin makes breakfast; sometimes it takes him a whole bottle of water to get through them all. He is painstakingly careful, measuring each spoonful of goji juice or half tablet of hormones with care.   
  
His mood is improved; that old Kamenashi willpower bubbling up through the fear he’s been fighting.   
  
It’s like they suddenly have their adolescence back. They spend their evenings making out in front of the television, knees and calves knocking together. Kame starts to feel heavy again. Jin can’t keep his hands off him.  
  
Sometimes, Kame goes to school with him, tapping the tambourine while the class sing. Jin tells them all that Kame is a superstar and they laugh like he’s joking. Kame makes him teach them a few Japanese children’s songs so he can sing along with them. His voice rises above the class, rich and clear and occasionally off key.   
  
Jin is crazy in love.  
  
\-   
  
Sometimes Kame seems lonely, now that he has the energy to do more than lie around and vomit and whine. There’s not really anyone for him to talk to here. Sometimes they hang out with Jin’s Australian friends, long evenings at barbecues and local footy matches. Kame’s English has improved enough that he can hold a stilted conversation about the weather or the footy or what he wants to eat, but it isn’t really the same, and it’s not nearly enough.   
  
“It’s fine,” Kame says whenever Jin asks about it, “I make do,” but Jin doesn’t believe him. Kame misses his family, his brothers and his father and his dog. He misses KAT-TUN. His friends. He misses his Mum. Jin should know; he feels the same way.   
  
A few times a week, Jin’s been making secret calls to his mother and letting her fuss over him. She promises him everything will be alright. Jin hopes it is the kind of promise she made when he was ten and wanted a Nintendo for his birthday and not the kind when he was five and she swore that Santa Claus was real. He closes his eyes and sniffles and lets her baby him. He feels homesick. He can’t imagine how Kame must feel.   
  
Jin is reading the local paper in the staff room when he sees it; a classified ad decorated with a rainbow and a star, a spill of flowers down one side.   
  
Private Japanese Lessons. Call Yumiko on 0439 111 870.   
  
-  
  
“You hired me a friend,” Kame says blankly.   
  
“I know the jimusho usually takes care of that for you,” Jin snipes.   
  
“Fuck you,” Kame says defensively. “I have plenty of friends.”   
  
“Oh yeah, you’re a social butterfly,” Jin says.   
  
“I am,” Kame says.  
  
Jin ignores him and fusses with Kame’s hair. Since he’s been feeling better, he’s been taking care of it again; it is shiny and chestnut brown all over. He says he can’t find anyone to give him a decent style cut here but Jin thinks he’s just being a princess. His hair looks amazing. It always looks amazing.   
  
“Stop it,” Kame grouses, jerking his head out of Jin’s hands. “What are you, my mother?”  
  
“I want you to make a good impression,” Jin says, smoothing the creases out of Kame’s sweater.   
  
“If this woman turns out to be a sociopath I’m going back to Japan,” Kame threatens.   
  
-  
  
Yumiko turns out to be a soft spoken obaachan with sedate silver hair and a pink cardigan. She has a warm smile and a gentle, measured manner like she’s stepped out of a book of Japanese stereotypes, and Kame relaxes immediately. Jin leaves him making tea for her and takes Baxter for a walk.   
  
When he comes back they are kneeling on the floor at the coffee table, speaking quietly over a stack of photographs she is showing him of a little pale-haired girl. Her granddaughter, from what Jin can pick up. In the photos she stands with a tall, sunburned blond man. Later, Kame will tell him that is her husband. She ran away from home to be with him, when she was barely 20 years old. When she first came to Australia, he was all she had in the world. She probably understands Kame better than anyone.   
  
“Except she doesn’t understand this whole ‘homo’ thing and thinks we should both just find some nice girls to look after us properly,” Kame says, but he’s grinning. He likes her, Jin can tell.   
  
He pulls Kame down so that his head is resting in Jin’s lap, strokes his hair. “What’s with you and old people?” Jin asks. Even when they were younger, Kame was always hanging out with people twenty years older than them, thirty years older. There were rumours for a time that he was involved with a much older woman; in love with a much older woman. Jin’s never been quite sure if they were true.   
  
“They know things,” Kame says vaguely. “It’s nice.”  
  
\-   
  
  
There’s a park a little inland where they go walking sometimes, wandering between the tall, ghostly eucalypts. People walk their dogs here, along leave-strewn paths trampled flat by hiking boots and mountain bikes. The paths all have signposts with names like ‘Ned’s Creek’ and ‘Bluegum Bill’s Gully’. Jin reads the names aloud for Kame and they laugh, loud chuckles that echo amongst the leaves.   
  
One day, something cackles back at them. Kame shrieks and grabs Jin’s arm, eyes as wide as moons.   
  
“What was that?” he asks, Adam’s Apple bobbing.   
  
“A kookaburra,” Jin says. “A bird.” He flaps his free hand like a wing.   
  
“A bird?” Kame repeats.   
  
“Yeah,” Jin says, and lifts his face to the sky to call “KOO KOO KOO KOO KA KA KA KA KA!!!”   
  
“Stop it,” Kame hisses, fingers crushing Jin’s bicep. “What if it comes after us?”   
  
“It’s only this big,” Jin says, making a little box with his hands. “It eats mice.”   
  
Kame flushes and drops Jin’s arm abruptly. “As if you weren’t scared the first time you heard it,” he says, stalking ahead angrily.   
  
Jin laughs. “Alice told me it was a monster and I locked myself in the car.”   
  
Baxter barks at them from further up the path. Jin stretches his legs to catch up to Kame’s pissy strides, then links their fingers together. Their arms swing between them like a bridge.  
  
\-   
  
Kame is more open with affection than he has ever been in their lives. Sometimes he touches Jin in public, fingers skimming his back along the line of his belt or drawing stars around the nub of his elbow.   
  
Jin mentions it to him one day, idly. He doesn’t really think about it at first but the second it is out of his mouth he is afraid that that the spell will be broken and Kame will slide his hand from the warm spot he’s found in Jin’s back pocket. In the end though, Kame just shrugs and says, “Nobody’s watching.”   
-  
  
There are still bad days sometimes, bad weeks, when Kame has to retreat to bed with a joint and a handful of painkillers. But those are the bad days. On the good days, it might be the happiest Jin has ever felt in his life.  
  
-  
  
When the bad news comes, it’s a surprise to Jin, but Kame seems to almost expect it. He won’t look at Jin, but he reaches out and wraps his fingers tight around Jin’s knee. It feels like all Kame’s weight is in that trembling hand.   
  
The cancer is spreading again, spreading so fast the doctors can’t contain it. It is inside his bones, inside his blood. The doctor says, “I’m sorry. I wish I had better news.”  
  
“But the chemo helped before,” Jin says. “It could help again, right?”  
  
“The treatment slowed the cancer’s progress,” he says. “But not for long. In my opinion -”   
  
“Maybe we want a second opinion,” Jin cuts in angrily, but Kame squeezes his knee.  
  
“How long do I have?” he asks.   
  
Jin’s heart pounds.   
  
“At the current rate of metastasis-”  
  
Jin storms out of the office before he has to hear the rest.   
  
-  
  
Kame takes to standing on the beach and staring far out to sea, dwarfed in a giant wooly cardigan and fuzzy beanie. Jin thinks he kind of likes the image of himself as a romantic martyr, suffering with stony jaw and glassy eyes, so he doesn’t try to bring him inside unless it looks like rain.   
  
-  
  
A few weeks later, Koki calls Jin to tell him the rest of KAT-TUN are coming to visit. Kame is asleep on the couch, Baxter slumped over his legs like a huge shaggy blanket.   
  
“You’re not bringing a camera crew, are you?” Jin says suspiciously.  
  
“No,” Koki says indignantly. “You’re an idiot.”  
  
“But management suggested it, right?” Jin asks wryly.   
  
“Of course,” Koki says. “How is he?” he asks after a minute. He sounds scared.   
  
Jin looks at the limp line of his body on the couch, his slightly jaundiced skin.  
  
“He’s great,” he lies.  
  
-  
  
The day they are due to arrive, Kame is subdued and introverted, staring into the mirror for long moments and trying to puff out his cheeks, to smear away the black bags beneath his eyes.   
  
“Stop it,” Jin say,s deflating Kame’s cheeks with his fingers. “You look fine.”   
  
“I don’t look fine,” Kame says angrily. “I don’t even look like me. I look like the cancer.”   
  
“Don’t be so melodramatic,” Jin scowls, but that day at school he raids the scrap bins in the art room; comes home with overflowing armfuls of silver tissue paper, fuschia feather boas and miles and miles of fabric covered in giant blue-green roses.   
  
“What is all that?” Kame asks suspiciously when Jin dumps it all on the coffee table. He picks up a long green feather and twirls it through the air.   
  
“You said you wanted to feel more like yourself, right?” Jin says. He throws the feather boa around Kame’s neck and uses it to pull him closer for a kiss. “Costume department!!!! What says ‘Kamenashi Kazuya’ better than a ridiculous costume?”   
  
“You’re such an idiot,” Kame says, but he starts combing the pile almost right away. He finds a square of blue cotton covered in bright pink stars and ties it around Jin’s head with a flourish.   
  
They spend about an hour draping each other in sparkling bits of paper and tinsel, pinning explosions of gold lace to their clothes. Jin makes Kame a clown’s collar out of crepe paper and epaulettes out of tinfoil. Kame drapes the awful blue roses around Jin’s hips like a skirt.  
  
When the taxi drops the guys at Jin’s front door, Ueda opens it without knocking and stares at them.   
  
“What are you doing?” he asks, eyes disgusted behind square glasses.   
  
\-   
  
It’s really weird to see everyone so emotional. They gather around Kame with suspiciously glassy eyes and tug at his costume and his hair. After a few minutes of almost girly squealing they all end up perched around him on the couch, filling him in on all the new JE gossip: who has been caught with call girls, cocaine, kids and a wife in the country. Who keeps getting caught halfway out of the closet.  
  
Watching them makes Jin kind of jealous and sad, the way he used to feel when he was a teenager and his parents would take Reio to Disneyland while Jin was busy with work. They’d always come home with some little souvenir for him but he’d be driven crazy thinking about all the things they did without him, all the fun they had when he wasn’t even there.  
  
He’s always avoided thinking too much about KAT-TUN going on without him all these years. They keep talking about memories that don’t include him, and it makes him irrationally angry until Koki claps an arm over his shoulder and says with misty eyes that it’s a relief to be back with the ‘real’ KAT-TUN. All six of them, finally coming back home.  
  
\-   
  
When Jin wakes up the next morning, the bed is empty and there are voices in the kitchen. He stumbles out bleary-eyed to see Koki and Kame sitting at the kitchen table, heads bent close together, shuffling through a thick stack of glossy photos of Koki’s little girl.  
  
Hanako is three years old. Her mother is a gravure model Koki had a one night stand with; eleven months later she dumped a two-month old baby at Koki’s apartment and took off. No-one has seen her since. Jin’s never really been convinced that Koki is definitely the father, but Kame says that if he even tries to suggest that Koki will beat the shit out of him, so Jin keeps it to himself. It doesn’t matter anyway. Koki is a really good dad.   
  
Kame’s looking increasingly misty with each passing snapshot of her rosy, pretty face. He barely even acknowledges Jin’s sleeping morning kiss, but Koki makes a disgusted face, as if he hadn’t walked in on Kame jerking Jin off in the shower once when they were teenagers and the whole thing where they’re in love is still new and shocking to him.   
  
“Ahh, kawaii!” Jin gasps, snatching a photograph of Hanako in fairy wings and a tiny sparkling tiara from Kame’s hands. “How’d you make something this cute?” He asks Koki rudely.   
  
“You should have brought her,” Kame scowls. There’s a tantrum brewing in his dark eyes and the firmly casual line of his wrists. His voice is swollen and raw. Jin thinks he might have already been crying this morning, and Koki looks suspiciously puffy all over.   
  
“I told you,” Koki says, collapsing in on himself in a defeated and shamed lump, as if Kame just accused him of treachery on a grand scale. “I didn’t think she’d understand.”   
  
“She looks so big,” Kame says sadly, eyes locked on the spread of her tiny, angelic face across the table.  
  
“Ah,” Koki agrees lamely.   
  
“I need to shower,” Kame says abruptly, pressing the photos back into a nice neat little stack and disappearing out the door, his breakfast of oats and fruit only half eaten.   
  
The second he’s gone, Jin kicks Koki under the table. “You made him cry, didn’t you?” He accuses.   
  
Koki looks so old, suddenly, sitting in this miserable kitchen with shoulders slumped and hair unruly.   
  
“I couldn’t help it,” he says. “He wanted to say goodbye.”   
  
“Shut up,” Jin says automatically, the way he does whenever anyone mentions the word ‘goodbye’ lately.   
  
“Jin--”   
  
“ _Shut up,_ ” Jin says. He’s not too old to put his hands over his ears and shout LA LA LA if he has to.   
  
“Are you gonna be ready?” Koki asks, reaching out to take Jin’s wrist. His kind heart is ripped open and spilling out everywhere. It hurts Jin to look at him. “He needs you to be ready.”  
  
“How can I be ready for something like this?” Jin asks angrily, but it isn’t rhetorical. He really wants an answer.  
  
-  
The last night, they all end up sleeping in one room together, Kame ensconced safely on the couch and the others making do with haphazard piles of cushions and blankets. They used to do this on tour sometimes, when they were really excited from a good show. Jin was usually the first to fall asleep and the last to wake up, but it was always his idea and his voice that drowned the other’s out.   
  
Nakamaru is having lady troubles, and Ueda fills them all in with a vicious kind of enthusiasm while Nakamaru’s cheeks soak red with blood. Ueda always gets this particular crazed glint in his eyes when he spills someone else’s embarrassing secrets; his voice comes out like a long slow laugh and his gestures grow large and grand, a sudden break from his general serenity.   
  
Kame takes advantage of the fact that no-one is willing to say ‘no’ to him lately to ask Nakamaru a bunch of intrusive questions that he would usually never even contemplate answering. In the end he ends up sheepishly admitting that he’s too nervous to sleep with this girl, and Kame says, “Is it because you’re afraid she’ll find out about your wig?”   
  
Everyone else explodes with laughter except Nakamaru, who crosses his arms and says, “You’re not even a little bit funny.”   
  
Jin picks up the ends of Nakamaru’s fringe and pulls them up high like antenna. He makes them dance to see Kame’s spastic little laugh.  
  
“Don’t be like that, Nakamura-san,” he croons.  
  
Nakamaru slaps Jin’s hands away but Jin can see him pursing his lips to force down his smile. Jin throws his arm around Nakamaru’s shoulder and pulls his head forcefully to his shoulder. “Aren’t you glad we’re friends?” he asks smugly.  
  
“No,” Nakamaru grumbles into Jin’s t-shirt.  
  
“I am,” Taguchi says, because he’s an idiot who can never read the mood. “I’m really glad we’re all friends.”  
  
This is the very last night they will spend together.  
  
-  
  
When they leave, Kame cries uncontrollably for hours. In dramas, guys always say they think their lover’s crying face is beautiful. Jin thinks Kame’s crying face is the ugliest thing he has ever seen. Every time he sees it, he hopes he won’t ever have to see it, ever again.   
  
-  
  
Kame has died on television six times, but Jin's never watched it before; he'd watched the first few minutes of Yuuki when it first aired and got so upset before Kame had even been diagnosed that he'd had to leave the room. Now though, he slowly gathers the dramas, slides dvds out of cases that haven't been opened since Kame first sent them, some years and years ago. It'll be practice, he thinks. It’ll get easier.  
  
He starts with the special where he's taken hostage by a bunch Korean terrorists and works his way up to the twelve episode leukemia epic, sitting on his couch with his knees drawn tight to his chest and fingers wrapped around his toes. He keeps waiting for the death to get easier, but it doesn't. It just gets harder every time.  
  
At two AM, Kame stumbles into the living room, yawning and rubbing sleepily at the side of his nose. He glances at the television, frowning a little at the sight of his own tired, pale face.  
  
“What are you doing?” he asks. He settles next to Jin on the couch and lays his head on his shoulder, wedges his cold feet underneath Jin’s woolen socks.   
  
On screen, Kame’s pretend mother sobs at his bedside.   
  
“Koki said you need me to get ready,” Jin says, lifting his chin proudly against the rising swell that threatens to break his voice.   
  
Kame is still, and then his hand slips over Jin’s, fingers sliding around his ankle and beneath his scratchy red socks. “Is it helping?” he asks.   
  
“Not really,” Jin says, “but I don’t know what else to do.”   
  
Kame’s voice is taut and he presses his face to Jin’s neck. “You don’t have to do anything.” His breath feels like the air on a humid day, right before the rain. “Just don’t go anywhere.”


	5. Part Five

Kame’s family come to visit; his mother had wanted to come months ago, had wanted to come and stay, but Kame wouldn’t let her because looking at her made him want to be weak, like a little boy. Jin’s heart lurches for her when she walks in and sees her baby for the first time in months. She’s always been so quiet and strong and proud, but for that first few minutes that cracks and all Jin can see is terror.  
  
She keeps smoothing her hands over Kame’s whole head; pulling his hair tight over his skull so you can clearly see the alien bulge of his brain and the rise of his big ears. Kame turns his face into her hand and just lets her paw at him.   
  
Kame has always talked more about his father. This is the first moment that Jin has clearly seen what a total Mama’s boy he is.   
  
The Kamenashi men hang back awkwardly; they are like reflections of Kame, solid and strong but plain where he is fading day by day but is still brilliant in his beauty. They nod politely in Jin’s direction, all dark eyes and familiar smiles beneath their neat, serious haircuts.  
  
Jin and these men have never really understood each other, until this moment.  
  
\-   
  
The Kamenashis take Kame away to Sydney for a few days while he is still well enough to enjoy the journey. Kamenashi-san suggests Jin stay home ‘to have a rest’, and he reluctantly agrees more because it seems only fair to give them time alone as a family than because he really wants a break.   
  
Kame ends up texting him obsessively every five minutes, as if he knows that with every minute of his silence, Jin imagines he might be dead.  
  
\-   
  
Only Kame’s mother stays longer than a week; his brothers all have young families back in Japan and his father just can’t seem to stand it any longer. Kame is deteriorating day by day, limbs becoming soft and useless. He hates the wheelchair they hire but seems to love making Jin perform stupid tasks for him. Kame has always kind of sheepishly liked being babied.   
  
What he likes best is lying in the bath right after his pain meds have kicked in, when his muscles go all loose and velvet but before they knock him out. He melts into the water and lets Jin wash his hair and rub his shoulders, moans and purrs beneath his hands.  
  
He seems pretty smug that he can still make Jin horny, but they’re both too tired to do anything about it.  
  
\-   
  
A few days after Christmas Jin’s friends organise their annual beach cricket championship. It’s cooler than usual for late December but the sun is high and brilliant in the bright blue sky. They trek down to the beach with their blankets and cricket bats, with eskies full of beer and picnic food. Jin carries Kame down the stairs to the sand on his back and he sits, wrapped in blankets, on a folding chair in a gentle patch of sun.   
  
He dozes while Jin is fielding, but when it’s his turn to bowl he cracks a lazy eye open to watch. He calls out stern criticisms of Jin’s practically non-existent bowling style, scowling every time someone easily hits the ball for six.   
  
“You’re useless,” Kame yells, scowling behind his giant sunglasses.  
  
“It’s not baseball!” Jin objects furiously. “It’s cricket! You don’t even know how to play.”   
  
“I bet I could play without even getting out of this chair and still do a better job than you,” Kame replies, but he cheers the loudest when Jin bowls Daniel out in the next round. Jin runs over to hug him as if he’s just singlehandedly won the whole match. Kame’s smile makes him feel like he has. He bends down at a precarious angle so Kame can wrap his arms tight around his neck. When Kame laughs and murmurs, “My hero,” Jin’s heart soars.   
  
-  
  
On the fourth of January, Kame checks himself into hospital, where everything is supposed to be a little more comfortable. He’s fucked up on morphine almost all the time now, and sometimes can’t stop puking for hours at a time. He has a private room overlooking a little garden lined with red bottlebrush and paper daisies.   
  
“I’m scared,” Kame says. They’re lying together in Kame’s hospital bed, limbs jammed at odds with the metal railing.   
  
“Don’t be,” Jin says. He presses Kame’s face closer to his chest. “In the next life we’ll both be robots.”   
  
“Robots?” Kame asks. He laughs a little because he’s trying to be brave, but Jin can feel his fingers twisting nervously in and out of the button holes in Jin’s sweater.   
  
“They don’t die,” Jin says.   
  
Kame’s breath hitches. “But they don’t have hearts either.”   
  
“Astro Boy had a heart!” Jin protests. “And Doraemon.”   
  
“Doraemon’s batteries ran out,” Kame says.   
  
“Fine,” Jin says. He lays his palm flat against the small of Kame’s back, where the skin is still soft and warm. “Fine, what do you think we should be?”   
  
“Mm,” Kame says. His voice is croaky like he’s speaking after screaming. When he was younger this is what he’d sound like after they fought and screamed at each other and made each other cry. “Birds. Seagulls.”   
  
Jin laughs and strokes Kame’s sweaty hair back. “You’re so corny.”  
  
“It’d be great,” Kame says. “Flying miles across the waves. Eating fresh fish all day.”   
  
Jin grimaces. “Seagulls are so annoying!”   
  
“Shut up,” Kame huffs. “You’re the one that wants us to come back as Doraemon.”  
  
Jin wraps his arm tight over Kame’s back; he can feel the ridges and planes of the bones in his tired shoulders, the faint warmth of fever.   
  
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a bird and I’m Doraemon,” he says, speaking into Kame’s hair. “I’ll still find you.”   
  
“I know,” Kame says, and clutches Jin’s hand.  
  
\-   
  
Two days later, Jin wakes a little after dawn to find Kame silent, hand growing cold on his stomach.   
  
“Kame?” he asks. Outside, the phones ring and the fat old nurse pushes the breakfast trolley down the halls with a clatter, but in this room, there’s nothing.  
  
-  
  
The next few days, he has so much to do. People keep telling him that’s normal, that he’s doing a good job, but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like someone cut off his leg and he’s standing there spurting blood and screaming in agony, but he has to finish the marathon anyway. All he wants to do is lie in bed and cry.   
  
Kamenashi-san is a constant, pale-faced presence in his peripheral vision. She needs him to speak to the bureaucrats with all their forms covered in little English letters, to call and make arrangements with the funeral home. Sometimes Jin just wants to give up and go home and let it all take care of itself, but he knows Kame would be pissed if he left her alone.  
  
Kamenashi-san is better with the details than him; the arrangements, the preparations. She listens quietly to Jin’s translations and relays instructions, touches his back silently when it seems like he might break down. He thinks she cries herself when she’s alone in her room at night. He thinks he should offer her more comfort, but she never lets him see her tears.  
  
They helped the nurses wash Kame before he was sent away to the funeral home, rituals in the rags and lukewarm water. Jin could see Kame in the tidy focus of his mother’s movements, in the long line of her neck and delicate eyelashes. He can’t look at her too long, especially when she smiles.  
  
“You’re a good boy, Jin-kun,” she tells him on the plane back to Japan. “You did a good job.”  
  
Jin leans his head on the thick window and watches as they leave the land behind.   
  
\-   
  
Johnny sends a security detail to meet them at the airport but they still have to push through a crazed mob of paparazzi just to meet them; the cameramen all call Jin’s name and bulbs flash in his face like gunfire. Kame is being sent directly to the funeral home and the idea makes Jin a little shaky and nervous; he’s worried they’ll lose him in transit like his skis that disappeared on a flight to Canada.   
  
The driver drops him at Pi’s place. It’s an unfamiliar building in an upscale part of town. Jin kind of misses the crappy complex Pi used to live in with his mother; Jin could ride there on his bike. That place didn’t have an elevator and the stairwells were decorated with bumper stickers and purikura, happy smiling faces with bunny ears at random intervals. When they were young, before Pi and Kame ever had that stupid fight that ruined everything for a while, Pi stuck a photo of the three of them under the light switch on the third floor. Jin wonders if it is still there.   
  
Pi is waiting in his open doorway when Jin steps out of the elevator; still dressed in his blue pajamas with messy hair and red eyes. He pulls Jin into a big hug right away. Pi always gives the best hugs; he feels warm and soft and solid the way all adults do when you’re a little kid, reassuring. Jin presses his fingers into Pi’s back until it feels like the tips of his fingers will break off, and he sobs.   
  
“The happiest part of my life is over,” he says into Pi’s wet neck, but Pi just hushes him and sways.  
  
-  
  
When they get home from Kame’s funeral, there’s a letter in Pi’s mailbox with Jin’s name scrawled across the front in Kame’s careful hand. It is postmarked two weeks ago and written on paper from the hospital gift shop. It has a border of blue daisies across the bottom and a little cartoon of a turtle. Kame had his whole life to practice drawing turtles and it is still barely recognisable.   
  
Jin reads it about a billion times.   
  
-  
  
 _Jin,_  
  
This is a list of demands.  
  
I expect you to do them all, even if it takes you your whole life.   
  
Visit my mother  
Visit your mother  
Release a single with KAT-TUN. Donate the proceeds to cancer research. I’ve already spoken to Mary about this. All you have to do is show up. Please show up.   
Learn to play the guitar properly  
Go to Antarctica   
Take Hanako-chan to karaoke  
Make friends with an eskimo  
Meet up with the others more  
Be a good father  
Make Baxter stop eating chocolate, it’s bad for him  
Get a (discreet) tattoo  
Find someone to love (but don’t love them more than me)  
Go back to all the places you wanted me to see  
Get regular check-ups!!!  
Be friends with Alice  
Give my nephews driving lessons  
Buy an organiser. Promise to at least try to use it.   
Bring Ran-chan home. She’s kind of old and wobbly now, so go easy, ne.   
Find Koki a good wife  
Invest wisely. I know you have savings but they’re just sitting there doing nothing. It’s like you’re ideologically opposed to making any money. You need to think about the future more. I left my financial advisor’s card in your wallet.   
Be nicer to Taguchi  
Play catch-ball with your son  
Visit the pyramids  
I know you want to write music. Never forget that you can do or be anything you put your mind to. I believe that of everybody, but especially of you. Please be more serious.   
Don’t forget me  
  
This one is the most important:   
  
Don’t let me be the thing that ruins your life.   
  
I’ll be with you.   
  
Kame  
  
-  
  
There’s a butsudan in Pi’s living room with photos of his late grandparents inside; It is tall, ornate mahogany and used to belong to Pi’s grandmother. Pi has had it as long as Jin can remember. It smells a bit like incense and oranges, like Pi. Pi is the only person under 60 that Jin knows that actually has a proper butsudan in his house.   
  
A few days after the funeral, Jin takes the photo he’s been carrying around in his wallet and balances it on the second shelf. For a minute he can’t stop his hands from shaking and the photograph keeps falling over, but he finally manages, with a burst of resolve, to lean it steady against a votive candle. Kame stares back at him with his gentle, tired smile.   
  
Concentrating on his movements, he takes a stick of incense and strikes a match. The perfume burns slowly, glowing dark yellow and pure. The smoke rises in curling tendrils. He slowly claps his hands and bows his head, concentrating on the sound of his own steady breath.   
  
-  
  
Jin calls Alice to arrange having Baxter transported to Japan. Baxter has never flown before and Jin’s kind of worried about it, but Pi says he’ll be excited like the first time they ever went on planes. Alice says they’ll probably give him some kind of sedative.   
  
“Are you sure about this?” she asks. “He’ll have to be quarantined for a while, if you’re not sure how long you’re staying...”  
  
“I need to stay at home for a while,” Jin says, with certainty. “I’ve got some stuff to take care of.”  
  
-  
  
Jin joins KAT-TUN for a benefit tour in Kame’s name. He has Pi blackmail Mary into donating a large portion of the proceeds to charity when his own sweet talking fails to secure more than a five percent cut. Mary keeps looking torn between being enraged and ecstatic about Jin’s return. She hasn’t quite decided if he’s a traitorous defector or the prodigal son; all she knows is, he is a potential gold mine. She thinks he will stay if she gives him everything he wants. He lets her, for now, because he can’t even think about looking into the future yet; the future beyond this tour, beyond Kame.   
  
He is overbearingly, obsessive compulsively stubborn about every decision that has to be made. Management keep trying to turn the tour into some kind of soft-focus, sepia toned lament to the past and that isn’t what they want at all. This is probably the tour that KAT-TUN have fought about most, except maybe their very first con when they could all barely stand the sight of each other’s stupid faces. Everybody is throwing their grief into making sure everything is perfect; long nights at the studio instead of at the grave site, eyes firmly focused on the future.   
  
They assemble an army of backdancers consisting of more or less every available junior. Mary just about has a heart attack at the expense but she’ll just have to deal with it. Kame wouldn’t want anyone to be left out. The boys are shipped between shows in giant buses that buzz with the beat of their excitement.   
  
This tour will have the brightest, most elaborate, most demented costumes the world has ever seen. It will have the biggest fireworks, the best laser show. They will all be idols on a whole new level, curling their hair and shining their cheeks to take a few steps closer to god.  
  
They open the first show with Peacefuldays and a full orchestra. The lights go up with a clash of cymbals and beating drums and pyrotechnic sparks explode in the sky like stars.   
  
Jin lifts his arms and yells, “We’re gonna make you scream so he can hear you!” and is answered by the deafening roar of the crowd.


End file.
